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

Betsy Prioleau's biography of Gilded Age female tycoon Miriam Leslie is "an appropriately twisty tale of someone trying to outrun her origins.... Her story sparkles, as intoxicating as a champagne fountain that somebody else is paying for" ( New York Times Book Review ). Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age--Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt--is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For 20 years she ran the country's largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker 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 that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both during and after her lifetime, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth.