Frederick Gleason

Frederick Gleason (c.1817 – November 6, 1896) was a publisher in Boston, Massachusetts, in the mid-nineteenth century. He is best known for establishing the popular illustrated weekly Gleason's Pictorial, at the time an innovation in American publishing. He has been called "the father of illustrated journalism."

Born in Germany, Gleason moved to the United States in his youth. He began his career as a bookbinder, working from a second-floor office on Tremont Street in Boston. In the late 1840s Gleason published a string of short novels written by his "stable of hack authors" including Benjamin Barker and Maturin Murray Ballou, often published pseudonymously. Representative are works by the pseudonymous Harry Halyard, including The Doom of the Dolphin and Wharton the Whale-Killer! Each novel ran "exactly 100 pages long and reflect[ed] the emphasis on glib dialogue and fast-paced action characteristic of the emerging 'dime novel' tradition."

Gleason began publishing a weekly story paper, The Flag of Our Union, in 1846. It became popular (75,000 copies circulated) and lucrative for Gleason ("an income of $25,000 a year") His expanding publishing enterprise operated out of a series of offices through the years; for some time Gleason's Publishing Hall was located on Tremont Street, in the former Boston Museum building.

In the 1840s Gleason built "Belvidere," a summer home on Bluehill Avenue in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, near Franklin Park; the house was "an elegant mansion ... landscaped with serpentine drives, fountains, and stands of mature trees." Pictures of the house appeared in Gleason's Pictorial, along with description:

Its great charm is the delightful and extended prospect it affords of the entire harbor of Boston, and the surrounding plain and hills for many miles in extent. The grounds immediately belonging to the house are some three acres in extent, and are improved to the best advantage by a thrifty growth of every species of rich and valuable tree … the house is situated on the Dorchester and Roxbury lines and is about four miles from the City of Boston.

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