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.

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.

[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.

...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.

[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.