Miriam Folline Leslie - Empress of Publishing
She was an actress, an editor, a supporter of woman's rights and a business woman in the days when a woman's place was clearly in the home, and not in the boardroom. She took a failing business and turned it around, not once but twice becoming the most successful business woman in America. She hobnobbed with Presidents, and sparred with Brigham Young. A beauty who loved diamonds, with a fair complexion and golden curls. An early feminist who left her entire fortune to further woman's rights. And finally a much-married, flirtatious, social rule breaker, who many women might have called a home wrecker but never to her face. Miriam Florence Follin (or Folline) was born in the Vieux Carre district of New Orleans in 1836. Like other scandalous women, she came from an inauspicious background. Her parents appeared not have been married, and the family's income was dependent on her handsome, erratic but cultured father. Charles Follin wandered around the country failing in one ...