William Astley

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William Astley (1854 – 5 October 1911), Australian short story writer who wrote under the pseudonym "Price Warung".

William Astley was the second son of Captain Thomas Astley and his wife Mary Price. He was born in Liverpool, England, in 1854, and was brought to Australia when he was four years old. The family settled in Richmond, Victoria, and William was educated at St Stephen's school and the Melbourne model school.

He obtained employment in booksellers' shops, and after taking up journalism was editor of the Richmond Guardian for a short period when only 21 years of age. He was subsequently connected with the Echuca Riverine Herald and other Victorian journals, the Launceston Daily Telegraph, the Workman, Sydney the Worker, the Tumut Independent and the Bathurst Free Press. While at Bathurst, New South Wales he was secretary of the Bathurst Federal League, which did useful work for federation. During the 1880s and 1890s Astley did some excellent free-lance work for the Sydney Bulletin in which many of his stories of the convict days were published.

The first collection of these, Tales of the Convict System, appeared in 1892, and this volume was followed by Tales of the Early Days (1894), Tales of the Old Regime (1897), Tales of the Isle of Death (1898), and Half-Crown Bob and Tales of the Riverine (1898).

Astley married Louisa Frances Cope of Launceston, Tasmania in September 1884. A copy of his certificate of marriage states that he was then 30 years of age. He had had a nervous breakdown in 1878, and in his last years there were recurrences of mental trouble. He died at Sydney on 5 October 1911.

Astley was a brilliant journalist and short story writer. He had made a study of early Australian history and worked over his stories with great care. There is a certain starkness about his work, but his tales are full of human nature and human pity. He must be ranked among the best writers of Australian short stories.