Gleason’s Pictorial

Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion was an illustrated news magazine published from 1851-1855 in Boston, Massachusetts. In the mid-nineteenth century, a time of enormous social and political upheaval in the United States, photojournalism was not yet widely practiced and photography itself was in its infancy in France. Periodicals such as Gleason’s provided the country with detailed visuals – prints of hand-engraved illustrations – in lieu of the photographs that wouldn’t accompany news articles until the turn of the twentieth century.

Worth noting in the illustrations, beside an impressive level of detail, are the artistic liberties and captions indicating a period in time when colonialism was still overtly, widely celebrated. Depictions of Native Americans, slaves, and non-Western cultures are not as we would present them today, and are to be considered in the historical context within which they were published. They do not represent our foundation’s views, but rather the period of time in which much of our family and community history is located.