Leslie Burton Blades

Leslie Burton Blades was an American novelist born in 1891. The main work that can be firmly confirmed is Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author, a novel first serialized in All-Story Weekly in October 1918 and published in book form in 1919.

The novel is especially memorable because it was presented as the work of a blind author, and its story also centers on blindness. That gives Blades a distinctive place among early popular fiction writers: his best-known book combines romance and survival adventure with an unusually direct interest in how blind characters move through danger, dependence, and emotional connection.

Reliable biographical details beyond that are scarce in the sources available here, so much of his life remains hard to pin down. Still, Claire has lasted long enough to be preserved by Project Gutenberg and other library catalogs, which suggests a small but lasting legacy among readers interested in forgotten fiction of the 1910s.