Marine Corps service and education
Sidney-Fryer was born and raised in the Atlantic coastal city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school, Sidney-Fryer could not afford to go to college. He knew the United States G. I. Bill would pay for four or five years of college after military service, so to further his education he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in October 1953. [1] In the Marines, in the three libraries at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, Sidney-Fryer first began reading science fiction. [2] Then he was transferred to the Marine Air Station at Opa-locka (today the Coast Guard Air Station Miami). [3] At the Opa-locka base library, Sidney-Fryer first read the works of Arthur C. Clarke, August Derleth, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. He was especially affected by Smith's story “The City of the Singing Flame”:
Emotionally and spiritually this last narrative, written in quite a remarkable and highly poetic prose, the like of which I had never encountered before, bowled me over and knocked me down, not just because of the colorful, vivid, and intense imagination that had shaped the story but equally because of the uncommon vocabulary without which the story could not have come into existence. Because I had studied Latin, French, and English each for four years in high school, particularly Latin, the vocabulary per se gave me no real problem. However, I had almost never before encountered such uncommon words, obviously Latinate, employed in a piece of fiction ... [4]
On September 5, 1955, Sidney-Fryer was transferred to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Orange County, California. [5] In the base library there, he was impressed by The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce . [6]
In September 1956, Sidney-Fryer began studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He initially majored in theatre arts and minored in French. In the evenings he studied ballet under Tatiana Riabouchinska, formerly with the Ballets Russes, and her husband David Lichine. He had performing in mind: “Even if I could not have become a ballet dancer at twenty or twenty-one, I knew the value of rigorous dance training in shaping a capable all-around performer.” After two years, he changed his major to French and minor to Spanish, thinking he would become a teacher of languages. [7]
Early literary work
Sidney-Fryer used the libraries of UCLA to investigate the history and creators of Romantic Ballet, which flourished from 1827 to the late 1800s. He took note of composer Cesare Pugni, who wrote symphonies, ten operas, forty masses, and more than three hundred ballet scores. Little had been published about Pugni and his works. Sidney-Fryer began compiling the names of Pugni's ballet scores and data about them. In addition to his own research, he hired researchers in London and Milan to uncover more information. Sidney-Fryer assembled the information as Cesare Pugni, 180?-1870: Checklist of Ballets and self-published a limited number of copies. A publisher in Italy then paid Sidney-Fryer to include his checklist in volume seven of its Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo in 1961. [8]
On August 26 and 27, 1958, Sidney-Fryer visited Clark Ashton Smith and his wife Carol in their home in Pacific Grove, California. Sidney-Fryer recalled, “when I asked him what poet meant to him what [Smith] meant to me, he turned around to a bookcase behind him and picked out a volume that had a dark blue Art Nouveau cover with a pictorial design and printing etched in silver: The House of Orchids [and Other Poems] (1911), by George Sterling.” Sterling's verses impressed Sidney-Fryer deeply. [9]
On Friday, September 5, 1959, he returned to the Smiths’ home in Pacific Grove for a second visit. That first night he stayed at a motel, but the Smiths offered for Sidney-Fryer to stay with them for the remainder of his visit. The two men passionately discussed literature for hours. Smith had a copy of an extremely rare bibliography of his fiction, and gave Sidney-Fryer permission to use Smith's own typewriter in his own study to type a copy of the bibliography for Sidney-Fryer's use. Sidney-Fryer left the Smiths on September 9. The bibliography Sidney-Fryer typed was Thomas G. L. Cockcroft's The Tales of Clark Ashton Smith: A Bibliography. Sidney-Fryer corresponded with Cockcroft about Smith's writings. Then Sidney-Fryer began to research and write a bibliography of all of Clark Ashton Smith's writings, a project which would take him years to complete. In the autumn of 1960, he met Forrest J. Ackerman, who helped Sidney-Fryer track down many Smith writings published in fantasy and science fiction fan publications.
In February 1961, Sidney-Fryer met Fritz Leiber and his first wife Jonquil, who became close friends and encouraged his Smith research. Leiber urged Sidney-Fryer to read Edmund Spenser’s epic fantasy poem The Faerie Queene , which changed his life:
The Faerie Queene proved a great shock and a great revelation, as great as had the writings of Clark Ashton Smith, but it was the poetry of Spenser that gave me the impetus to write my first poetry since the juvenilia I had composed in late grammar school and early high school. The Leibers encouraged me just as much in my own writing as in my Smith research. [10]
Inspired by The Faerie Queene, in March 1961 Sidney-Fryer began to write poetry. In September 1964 he received his bachelor's degree in French from UCLA. In addition to English, French, and Spanish, Sidney-Fryer had also learned German, Russian, and Greek. In 1964 he completed editing a collection of Smith's prose poems. For the collection's introduction he wrote a history of prose poems and Smith's achievements in that field. [11]
In July 1965, Sidney-Fryer's anthology of Smith's prose poems was published by Arkham House, which had published volumes by H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Smith. In the middle of the year he moved to Auburn, California (Clark Ashton Smith's hometown). That year Sidney-Fryer completed his bibliography of Smith's writings, but was unable to find a publisher for it. [12]
He moved to San Francisco in January 1966. He would live in San Francisco until 1975. He met and fell in love with dental hygienist Gloria Kathleen Braly. After two years of living together they married and lived in an open marriage. After two years of marriage, they divorced. [13]
Later life
Sidney-Fryer started performing dramatic readings shortly thereafter at universities, theaters, libraries, and bookstores, almost always incorporating material by Smith and Spenser. His poetry has continued to appear in a variety of weird fiction and speculative poetry-oriented journals.
Sidney-Fryer's verse is marked by a strong imagination, and a Francophilic focus. He is a strong believer in "pure poetry," and practices formalist verse, having developing his own specific poetic form: the 'Spenserian stanza-sonnet'.
He remains a prolific historian of 19th century ballet, and is an expert on the ballet theatre of the romantic era.
in May 2025, 91-year-old Sidney-Fryer suffered a stroke which necessitated his move to a nursing home.
