Arthur Leeds

Arthur Leeds was an American writer active in the early 1900s. Reliable details about his life are scarce, but surviving records connect him to both magazine fiction and motion-picture writing at a time when cinema was still finding its storytelling language.

He is credited, with J. Berg Esenwein, as co-author of Writing the Photoplay (1913), an early handbook for aspiring screenwriters. He also has credits as a writer for silent films, and later readers of weird fiction have kept his name alive through the story "The Return of the Undead," published in Weird Tales.

Because so little firmly documented biographical information is easy to verify, part of his appeal is the mystery. What remains clear is that his work sits at an interesting crossroads: the rise of pulp horror, the craft of popular writing, and the beginnings of screen storytelling in America.