Maturin Murray Ballou

Portrait of M.M. Ballou, 1852

Maturin Murray Ballou (April 14, 1820 – March 27, 1895) was a writer and publisher in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts. He co-founded Gleason's Pictorial, was the first editor of the Boston Daily Globe, and wrote numerous travel books and works of popular fiction.

Brief biography

1820s–1840s

Ballou was born in Boston in 1820, to parents Hosea Ballou and Ruth Washburn. He attended The English High School, and although he passed the entrance exam for Harvard College, he did not attend. He married Mary Anne Roberts on Sept. 15, 1839; children included Murray Roberts Ballou (b. 1840).

Starting around 1838, Ballou wrote for the Olive Branch, a weekly paper published in Boston. In addition to writing, he worked various jobs for the Boston Post Office, 1839 and the Boston Custom House, ca.1845.[1][2] From 1842 through 1844, Ballou and Isaac H. Wright published the weekly newspaper Bay State Democrat. Writing under the pseudonym Lieutenant Murray, Ballou authored popular novels which were published by Frederick Gleason starting around 1845, such as The Gipsey, or, the Robbers of Naples: a Story of Love and Pride. He also wrote stories for The Flag of Our Union.

1850s

Ballou's Pictorial, January 12, 1856

In 1851, Ballou and Frederick Gleason established the weekly paper Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion.[3] It was inspired by The Illustrated London News.[4] The first issue appeared on May 3, 1851, and declared: "The object of this paper is to present, in the most elegant and available form, a weekly literary melange of notable events of the day. Its columns are devoted to original tales, sketches, and poems, by the best American authors, and the cream of the domestic and foreign news; the whole well spiced with wit and humor."[5] In November 1854, Ballou bought out Gleason and changed the paper's name to Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion.

Around 1857 Ballou's publishing enterprise in Boston operated from 22 Winter Street, in a building constructed in 1856.

"...The building housed on its first two main floors the editorial and business offices of the publisher Maturin Murray Ballou. The basement held the 12 steam-powered presses that each week brought forth, among other publications, more than 100,000 copies of a 16-page, profusely illustrated journal, Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion. Engravers occupied the 3rd floor, working at desks by the windows. Atop the building's 4 storeys rose an attic crowned with a large light-admitting lantern. This lantern illuminated the room that Ballou had provided for the graphic artists who contributed to his Companion.[6]

Illustrators who worked for Ballou included John Andrew, Charles A. Barry, W.L. Champney, John Chapin, William Croome, Charles Damoreau, George Devereux, Winslow Homer, Frank Leslie, John Manning, Emile Masson, Samuel Worcester Rowse, William Wade, Alfred Waud, William Waud.[6]

By 1859, M.M. Ballou published several additional periodicals:

1860s–1890s

In 1867, Ballou built the St. James Hotel, on Franklin Square in Boston. The hotel had 400 rooms, and was "the largest family hotel in the city, and one of the most expensively furnished."[8]

He served as the first editor of the Boston Daily Globe, from 1872 to 1874.[3][9] Contemporary reviews were positive:

"Boston has another daily newspaper, to add to the 8 or 10 already published here. The Boston Daily Globe comes into being full-armed, like Minerva from the head of Jove; a large 8-page paper, having more of the cast of countenance belonging to the Times or the Tribune than any of its Boston relatives. It claims to be neutral in politics.... This is a new departure in journalism."[10]

In the 1880s and 1890s he authored several travel books, covering Alaska, Russia, Cuba, India, South America, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa, and elsewhere. In 1882 he "circumnavigated the globe." [11]

In 1885–1886, he was a proprietor of the Boston Athenaeum.[12]

Ballou died on March 27, 1895, in Cairo, Egypt, where he had been with his wife since January 1895.[13] He is buried in Boston.

Selected works

Non-fiction

Travel

Fiction

Fanny Campbell, 1844

Drama

References

  1. ↑ Marquis Who Was Who in America 1607–1984.
  2. ↑ Houghton Mifflin Company. A catalogue of authors whose works are published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Riverside Press, 1899.
  3. 1 2 Chisholm 1911.
  4. ↑ Frank Luther Mott. A History of American Magazines, Volume II, 1850-1865. Harvard University Press, 1938; p.411
  5. ↑ Gleason's pictorial. v.1, no.1, May 3, 1851.
  6. 1 2 David Tatham. Winslow Homer and the pictorial press. Syracuse University Press, 2003; p.11
  7. ↑ Ballou's Monthly Magazine
  8. ↑ King's handbook of Boston. 1881; p.56.
  9. ↑ Louis M. Lyons. "How The Globe began." Boston Globe, March 5, 1972
  10. ↑ The Ladies' Repository. A. Tompkins, v. 47, 1872; p.318.
  11. ↑ Dictionary of American Biography.
  12. ↑ Register of the proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum from its foundation to December 31, 1897 according to the certificate book. The Boston Athenaeum, 1898.
  13. ↑ Wrote books of travels; Death of Maturin M. Ballou in Cairo, Egypt. Was a Born Writer and His Pen Made for Him a Mark in Literature. One of the Original Founders and Once Editor of The Daily Globe. Boston Daily Globe, Mar 29, 1895. p.3.

Further reading

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