Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age - Betsy Prioleau - Bog

The first biography of the glamorous and scandalous Miriam LeslieΓÇöa titan of publishing and an unsung hero of womenΓÇÖs suffrageΓÇöconnecting Gilded Age opulence with present-day social justiceAmong the fabled tycoons of the Gilded AgeΓÇöCarnegie, Rockefeller, VanderbiltΓÇöis a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For 20 years she ran the countryΓÇÖs 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 harbored unsavory secrets which she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both before and after her death, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth. At the end, Leslie, a staunch royalist and member of the ultra-elite, willed her multimillion-dollar estate to womenΓÇÖs suffrage, providing enough funding to guarantee the passage of the 19th Amendment. A dazzling biography, Diamonds & Deadlines reveals the unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen ΓÇ£Empress of JournalismΓÇ¥ who presaged the feminist future and reflected, in bold relief, the Gilded Age, one of the most momentous, seismic, and vivid epochs in American history.