William Augustine Leahy

William Augustine Leahy was an American author born in 1867 and remembered chiefly for The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery, a novel first published in the 1890s and later preserved by both Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg.

Catalog and bookseller records also connect him with dramatic writing, including works such as The Siege of Syracuse and The Wedding Feast, suggesting a writer whose interests ranged beyond fiction into the stage. A Harvard finding aid further shows correspondence from Leahy dating from 1925 to 1938, which hints that he remained engaged with literary life for many years.

Reliable biographical detail on Leahy appears to be fairly scarce online, so much of his personal story remains hard to pin down. Even so, the survival of his work in major digital archives has helped keep his name in circulation for readers curious about overlooked American popular fiction.