Diamonds and Deadlines

Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age – Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt – is a forgotten figure: Miriam Leslie. For 20 years she ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Enterprises, which chronicled the postbellum United States in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity in the process. But Miriam Leslie was also a byword for scandal: She flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times and harboured unsavory secrets which she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. This is the first biography of the brilliant ’empress of journalism’.