William Edward Frye

Best known as Major W. E. Frye, he was a British officer and writer whose surviving work shows a strong interest in travel, literature, and the cultures of continental Europe. Published sources identify him as the author of After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel, 1815–1819, a firsthand account based on journeys he made in Europe in the years immediately following Napoleon’s defeat.

Frye also worked as a translator. The title pages of nineteenth-century editions credit him with translating Adam Oehlenschläger’s The Gods of the North into English verse, and describe him as a former major of infantry in the British service. Those same editions note his membership in the Academy degli Arcadi in Rome, suggesting he moved in literary as well as military circles.

Although little biographical detail is easy to confirm today, the writing connected with his name preserves an engaging mix of eyewitness travel narrative and Romantic-era fascination with northern legend. For modern readers, his books offer both historical atmosphere and a personal glimpse of how an English traveler understood postwar Europe.