Donald Sidney-Fryer

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Donald Sidney-Fryer is a poet and entertainer born in 1934, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps, and moved to California, where he attended university, and met Clark Ashton Smith several times. In 1969, he married Gloria Kathleen Braly, and started giving readings shortly thereafter, usually incorporating material by Smith, and his other principal poetic influence, Edmund Spenser.

Sidney-Fryer is connected principally to the works of Clark Ashton Smith in a number of ways. He published an important essay on him, "The Sorcerer Departs" in 1963, and wrote the principal bibliography, The Emperor of Dreams. He also edited a number of collections of Smith's poetry, chiefly, Poems in Prose and Selected Poems. He has edited a number of collections of Smith's short stories, and co-edited The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith.

In addition, he has translated Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit, written A Checklist of the Ballet Scores of Cesare Pugni, and published three collections of his own verse under the generic title: Songs and Sonnets Atlantean.

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, developing his own specific poetic form, the Spenserian stanza-sonnet.

Sidney-Fryer is also a prolific historian of 19th century ballet, and is an expert on the ballet theatre of the romantic era.

[edit] Bibliography

A Checklist of the Ballet Scores of Cesare Pugni (Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, Vol VIII, Rome, 1961).
(Ed.) Poems in Prose by Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).
(Ed.) Other Dimensions by Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970).
(Ed.) Selected Poems by Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971).
Songs and Sonnets Atlantean (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971).
The Last of the Great Romantic Poets (Albuquerque, NM: Silver Scarab Press, 1973).
(Comp.) Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978).
(Ed.) The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979).
(Ed.) A Vision of Doom by Ambrose Bierce (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1980).
(Ed.) The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Pocket/Timescape, 1981).
(Ed.) The Last Incantation by Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Pocket/Timescape, 1982).
(Ed.) The Monster of the Prophecy by Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Pocket/Timescape, 1983).
(Ed.) Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction & Essays of Clark Ashton Smith (with Steve Behrends and Rah Hoffman; New York: Greenwood Press, 1989).
(Ed.) The Devil's Notebook: Collected Epigrams and Pensées of Clark Ashton Smith (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, Inc., 1990).
(Ed.) The Hashish-Eater by Clark Ashton Smith (Privately issued, Sacramento, CA, 1990).
Clark Ashton Smith: The Sorcerer Departs (West Hills, CA : Tsathoggua Press, 1997).
Songs and Sonnets Atlantean: The Second Series (Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003).
(Trans.) Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantasies in the manner of Rembrandt and Callot by Aloysius Bertrand (Encino, CA: Black Coat Press, 2004).
Songs and Sonnets Atlantean: The Third Series (Los Angeles, CA: Phosphor Lantern Press, 2005).
The Sorcerer Departs: Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) (Dole: Silver Key Press, 2007).
The Case of the Light Fantastic Toe: The Romantic Ballet and Signor Maestro Cesare Pugni (as yet unpublished)