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Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper
April 28, 1883

Frank Leslie's Weekly, later often known in short as Leslie's Weekly, was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1852 and continuing publication well into the 20th century. As implied by its name, it was published weekly, on Tuesdays. Its first editor was John Y. Foster. In 1897, its circulation was estimated at 65,000, compared to only 30 copies printed of the first edition.^[1]

It was one of several magazines started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie and was continued after his death in 1880 by his widow, the women's suffrage campaigner Miriam Florence Leslie. The name, by then a well-established trademark, remained also after 1902, when it no longer had a connection with the Leslie family. It continued until 1922.^[2]

Throughout its decades of existence, the weekly provided illustrations and reports - first with woodcuts and Daguerreotypes, later with more advanced forms of photography - of wars from John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry and the Civil War until the Spanish-American War and the First World War.

It often took a strongly patriotic stance and frequently featured cover pictures of soldiers and heroic battle stories. It also gave extensive coverage to less martial events such as the Klondike gold rush of 1897, covered by San Francisco journalist John Bonner.

Among the writers publishing their stories in the weekly were H. Irving Hancock, Helen R. Martin, and Ellis Parker Butler. Some of the magazine's covers in its later period were drawn by Norman Rockwell.

Surviving copies of the magazine at present fetch handsome prices as collectors' items and are considered to give a vivid picture of American life during the decades of its publication.

References

1. ^ N.W. Ayer & Son, The American Newspaper Annual (New York, 1897) 1896: Journals of the Campaign (the figure may have been inflated).
2. ^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 66. ISBN 086576008X

External links

• Coverage of the laying of the 1858 Atlantic Cable in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
• "At the Gate of Klondike" by John Bonner in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1858
• Covers of Leslie's Weekly
• Magazine Cover Art from Leslie's Weekly
• The San Francisco Earthquake in Leslie's Weekly

See also

• Cathedral of All Saints