FEBRUARY 25, 1865 FRANK LESLIE\'S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER, NEW YORK - A576 For Sale

FEBRUARY 25, 1865 FRANK LESLIE\'S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER, NEW YORK
Fascinating piece of American history. A small tear and a small missing piece.
Please see photos for condition details. Note lighting variations may alter colors of items in photos.
size: ~15 3/4\" x 11\"
16 pages
From American Antiquarian Society:

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, established in 1855,was the first successful pictorial newspaper in the United States. Before immigrating to the United States in 1848, Frank Leslie (born Henry Carter; 1821-80) had worked for six years in the engraving department at theLondon Illustrated News, which began in 1842 and would become the model for the commercial illustrated press in America. After arriving in the United States, he did stints withGleason’s Pictorialin Boston and theIllustrated Newsin New York before founding one monthly women’s magazine and acquiring another. But what he really wanted was a weekly illustrated newspaper, and on December 15, 1855, he published the first issue ofFrank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

ThoughLeslie’swould become a great success, its first few years were plagued by the same instability of its other American predecessors. Leslie, however, who found that activism, sensationalism, and tell-alls sold, finally found a stable readership with his paper’s extensive nonpartisan coverage of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and the ensuing trial and execution. By 1860,Leslie’shad a circulation of 164,000. Right through secession and up to the bombing of Fort Sumter,Leslie’stried to keep its Southern readership by balancing its coverage of events and printing a variety of opinions. After the bombardment, however, the paper switched to a strong pro-Union stance and found a wider audience in a Northern populace now invested in war.