Alfred William Pollard,
FBA (14 August 1859 – 8 March 1944) was an English
bibliographer
Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...
, widely credited for bringing a higher level of scholarly rigor to the study of
Shakespearean
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
texts.
Biography
Pollard was born at 1 Brompton Square,
Kensington
Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London.
The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Garden ...
in London, the youngest son of a doctor, Edward William Pollard.
[Greg, W.W. 'Pollard, Alfred William' in ''The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (2004)] He was educated at King's College School in
the Strand and
St John's College at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. Unable to teach due to his pronounced stammer, he joined the staff of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in 1883, as assistant in the department of printed books; he was promoted to assistant keeper in 1909, and keeper in 1919.
[ In the latter year, Pollard was appointed professor of English bibliography at the ]University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...
. He was honorary secretary of the Bibliographical Society
Founded in 1892, The Bibliographical Society is the senior learned society dealing with the study of the book and its history in the United Kingdom.
Largely owing to the efforts of Walter Arthur Copinger, who was supported by Richard Copley ...
from 1893 to 1934 and edited the society's journal ''The Library'' for thirty years (1903–34). He received the society's gold medal in 1929.
Pollard married Alice England of Newnham College
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millice ...
in 1887[ and there were two sons and a daughter. But during the war his two sons were both lost in action: his oldest, Geoffrey Blemell Pollard, a Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery was killed in the fighting near Le Baseé, France on 24 October 1914. Then a year later, on 13 October 1915, his second son Roger Thompson Pollard, a Lieutenant in the 5th Royal Berkshire Regiment, was also killed. Pollard wrote a memorial, ''Two Brothers. Accounts Rendered'', which was privately printed for friends in 1916, and a year later issued by Sidgwick and Jackson.
Pollard wrote widely on a range of subjects in English literature throughout his career, and collaborated with various scholars in specialized studies; he edited Sir Philip Sidney's ''Astrophel'' in 1888, ]Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
's ''Canterbury Tales'' (Globe edition, 1898), a collection of ''Fifteenth Century Poetry and Prose'' (1903) and Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources. The most popular version of ''Le Morte d'Ar ...
's ''Le Morte d'Arthur
' (originally written as '; inaccurate Middle French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the ...
'' (1910-11, in four volumes). His ''Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: a Study in the Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays, 1594–1685'', published in 1909, remains an important milestone in Shakespearian criticism.[Obituary, ''The Times'', 9 March, 1944, p.7]
With Gilbert Richard Redgrave
Gilbert Richard Redgrave (12 May 1844 in Kensington, London – 14 June 1941 in Abinger Common, Surrey) was an English architectural draughtsman, bibliographer and art historian.
Redgrave was son of the painter Richard Redgrave and his wife Rose ...
, he edited the STC, or ''A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English books printed abroad, 1475–1640'' (1926). He provided a bibliographical introduction to a facsimile print of the 1611 King James Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of ...
which was produced for its three hundredth anniversary. His contemporary friends included the poet A. E. Housman and the artist Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...
, and he was a close colleague of the prominent Shakespeare scholars Edmund Kerchever Chambers
Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers, (16 March 1866 – 21 January 1954), usually known as E. K. Chambers, was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. His four-volume work on ''The Elizabethan Stage'', published in 1923, remains a st ...
and R. B. McKerrow
Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, FBA (12 December 1872 – 20 January 1940) was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century.
Life
R. B. McKerrow was born in Putney, son of Alexander McKerrow, a civil engineer, and M ...
.[
In 1935 Pollard suffered a fall while gardening which seriously affected him, but he lived another nine years, dying at Wimbledon Hospital, aged 85, survived by his daughter.][ He is buried with his wife Alice (1857-1925) in the churchyard of ]St Mary's Church, Wimbledon
St Mary's Church, Wimbledon, is a Church of England church and is part of the Parish of Wimbledon, south-west London, England. It has existed since the 12th century and may be the church recorded in the Domesday Book in the Mortlake Hundred. It ...
.
Works
*''Last words on the history of the title-page, with notes on some colophons and twenty-seven fac-similes of title-pages'', 1891.
* ''Chaucer'', London, Macmillan and Co, 1893.
*''English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes; Specimens of the Pre-Elizabethan Drama'', Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1898 (third revised edition).
*
fourth revised edition, 1904
* (ed.) ''Fifteenth Century Poetry and Prose'', London, 1903.
* ''Books in the House: An Essay on Private Libraries and Collections for Young and Old'', Indianapolis: By Arrangement with Ralph Fletcher Seymour by Bobbs-Merrill, 1904.
1905.
*''Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: A Study in the Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays'', 1909.
*''Records of the English Bible: The Documents Relating to the Translation and Publication of the Bible in English, 1525–1611'', London, Oxford University Press, 1911.
''Fine Books''
1912.
*''A New Shakespeare Quarto: Richard II'', 1916.
* ''Tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table'', abridged from Le Morte d'Arthur, 1917.
''Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of the Transmission of His Text''
1917.
* ''Two Brothers. Accounts Rendered'', London, 1917.
''The Foundations of Shakespeare's Text''
1923. Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy.
*''Shakespeare's Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More'' (with W. W. Greg
Sir Walter Wilson Greg (9 July 1875 – 4 March 1959), known professionally as W. W. Greg, was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century.
Family and education
Greg was born at Wimbledon Common in 1875. H ...
, Edward Maunde Thompson
Sir Edward Maunde Thompson (4 May 1840 – 14 September 1929) was a British palaeographer and Principal Librarian and first Director of the British Museum.
He is noted for his handbook of Greek and Latin palaeography and for his study of Will ...
, John Dover Wilson and R. W. Chambers), 1923.
*''Early Illustrated Books: A History of the Decoration and Illustration of Books in the 15th and 16th Centuries'', 1927.
*''The Trained Printer and the Amateur, and the Pleasure of Small Books'', 1929.
*''A Census of Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto'' (with Henrietta C. Bartlett), 1939.
References
*Woudhuysen, Henry R. ''A.E.H., A.W.P.: A Classical Friendship.'' Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Foundling Press and Bernard Quaritch, 2006.
*Murphy, Gwendoen, and Henry Thomas. ''A Select Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred W. Pollard.'' Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1938.
''New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors''
External links
*
*
*
Portrait by Frank Brooks at the British Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollard, Alfred W.
Employees of the British Library
Alumni of St John's College, Oxford
Academics of the University of London
1859 births
1944 deaths
Shakespearean scholars
English bibliographers