author
Leslie Burton Blades
b. 1891
A blind American writer and woodcarver, he is best remembered for Claire (1919), a novel that drew on his own experience of blindness and resilience. His story began in a Colorado mining camp and carried through a long creative life in California.
1 Audiobook
Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author
by Leslie Burton Blades
About the author
Born in Colorado in 1891, Leslie Burton Blades lost his sight as a child after a dynamite-cap accident in a gold-mining camp. Contemporary newspaper coverage later described him as a remarkably accomplished blind young man, and later bookseller notes about his work repeat that early Colorado background.
Blades is best known for Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author, first published in 1919. Library and Project Gutenberg records confirm that the novel remained the work most closely associated with his name, and its subtitle suggests how directly he brought his own lived experience into fiction.
He continued creating well beyond that early success. Smithsonian records connect him with Harriet Blades, and a later collection, To You Out There: Poems and Woodcarvings 1918-1973, shows that his work also included poetry and woodcarving over many decades. Public records indexed online place his life from August 27, 1891, to January 2, 1976, ending in Alameda County, California.