Raymond Lionel Frye was born in Sydney in 1930, and educated at Scots College, Bellevue Hill, where he was encouraged by his English master to become a writer. After graduating in Arts from Sydney University he worked as a journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald, went to England, where he worked as a shop assistant and accounts clerk, and then travelled across postwar Europe in a recycled London taxi cab. Returning to Australia after two years, he worked with Unilever as advertising copy writer and market research executive, and later as a public servant in the NSW Education Department. He retired early after a breakdown, but continued writing poetry, philosophical and historical works. He died in Sydney in 1999.

Frye published four volumes of poetry, and some of his writings appeared in journals and collections. A posthumously published selection of his work, In a Strange City, was published in 2000.