William Astley (13 August 1855 – 5 October 1911) was an Australian short-story writer who wrote under the pseudonym Price Warung.

[1] He was subsequently connected with the Echuca Riverine Herald and other Victorian journals, the Launceston Daily Telegraph, the Workman, the Worker (Sydney), the Tumut Independent and the Bathurst Free Press.

During the 1880s and 1890s Astley did some free-lance work for The Bulletin in which four series of his stories of the convict days were published.

In 1881 Astley had been charged in Hobart with embezzling 60 pounds, and eventually sentenced to two years imprisonment.

In 1897 he attempted to extort money from the publishers Angus and Robertson, and was strongly implicated in the successful defrauding of the book collector David Scott Mitchell of 125 pounds by means of the sale of non-existent Australiana.