Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
American illustrated literary and news magazine
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, later renamed Leslie's Weekly, was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1855 and published until 1922. It was one of several magazines started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie.
Throughout its existence, the weekly provided illustrations and reports—with wood engravings, lithographs and steel engravings based on sketches and photography, beginning with daguerreotypes and later with more advanced forms of photography—of wars from John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry and the Civil War to the Spanish–American War and the First World War - and numerous other articles of topical interest.
History
Background
Frank Leslie was the pen name of Henry Carter (1821–1880), the son of a well-to-do English glovemaker. Carter had taken up the art of wood engraving over his father's objection and emigrated to New York City, arriving in 1848 and immediately adopting "Frank Leslie" as his pseudonym. Unable to find a position as an illustrator with an established newspaper, he opened his own business, an engraving shop on Broadway.
One of Leslie's early clients was promoter P. T. Barnum, who commissioned Leslie to produce a posh illustrated concert program for singer Jenny Lind in 1849. Additional work was done for Barnum for another Lind tour in 1850 and 1851. When Barnum decided to launch a publication called The Illustrated News in 1853, he turned to Leslie, hiring him as chief engraver for the short-lived publication, which failed within its first year of existence.
Leslie decided to begin publishing on his own, launching two new periodicals in 1854—Frank Leslie's Ladies' Gazette of Fashion, a fashion-oriented newspaper, and Frank Leslie's Journal of Romance, an illustrated fiction magazine.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper” as american illustrated literary and news magazine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as american illustrated literary and news magazine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5487925. VIAF identifies the subject as 190771681. The Library of Congress control number is n85225526. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1855, 1922, 1821 and 1880.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.