Walter Herries Pollock
Encyclopedia
Walter Herries Pollock was an English writer, poet, lecturer and journalist. He is best known as editor of the Saturday Review
, a position he held from 1884 to 1894, but also had published various miscellaneous writings that included novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translated works between 1877 and 1920. He was also, at one time, considered one of the best amateur fencers in Great Britain.
Pollock was well known in Britain's literary circles during the Victorian era
and was close friends with a number of writers, including Robert Lewis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling
, Oscar Wilde
, Egerton Castle
, W.E. Henley and Henry Irving
. He was also involved in collaborations with Alexander Duffield, Sir Walter Besant, Andrew Lang
, F. C. Grove and Camille Prévost and Lilian Moubrey.
A member of the esteemed Pollock family
, he was the second son of Sir William Frederick Pollock, 2nd Baronet and brother to lawyer Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet and George Frederick Pollock. He in turn was the father of newspaperman Guy Cameron Pollock, a longtime journalist for the Evening Standard
and Daily Express
, and managing editor of the Morning Post
. Walter and Guy Pollock wrote a novel together in 1905.
royal court
and saddler
to King George III. One of his grand-uncles, Sir David Pollock, was the chief justice
of Bombay, while another, Sir George Pollock, became a field marshal
. His own father was an author and Queen's Remembrancer under Queen Victoria
from 1874 to 1886, when the post was passed on to his brother George Frederick Pollock who continued to hold the title until the turn of the century
. His eldest brother, Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet, was a noted lawyer and frequently worked with him during his career.
Educated at Eton
and Trinity College, Cambridge
, he graduated with a classical degree
in 1871 and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple
three years later. He developed an interest in literature and history and began lecturing at the Royal Institution, London
. Among the subjects he discussed included the works of Richelieu, Colbert
, Victor Hugo
, Sir Francis Drake and Théophile Gautier
. In 1875, he joined the staff of the Saturday Review
and became an assistant editor. It was around this time that he began courting Emma Jane Pipon, daughter of Colonel Pipon, Seigneur de Noirmont of Jersey, and the two were married in Chester
on January 11, 1876. Their first and only son, Guy Cameron Pollock, was born that same year.
It was while working for the publication that he first began writing professionally and co-wrote Marston: A Story of these Modern Times with Alexander J. Duffield in 1877. He also published literary critical works such as The Modern French Theatre (1878) and Lectures on French Poets (1879), English-language translations of works by Alfred de Musset
's and Denis Diderot
, and a collection of poetic verses entitled Songs and Rhymes: English and French (1882) and Verses of Two Tongues (1884).
In 1884, Pollock succeeded Philip Harwood as editor of the Saturday Review and remained with the publication for the next 10 years. He became close friends with many members of Victorian Britain's literary circle including Robert Lewis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling
, Oscar Wilde
, Egerton Castle
, W.E. Henley and Henry Irving
. It is also alleged that he had an extramarital affair with English hostess Violet Hunt
.
Another close friend and collaborator, Andrew Lang
, worked with Pollock on the Saturday Review and published many of Lang's anonymous reviews and "middle" articles. Pollock continued writing, mostly fiction and poetry, and co-authored Uncle Jack (1885) with Sir Walter Besant and He (1887) with Andrew Lang. By himself, he wrote A Nine Men's Morrice (1889), Old and New (1890), The Seal of Fate (1891) and King Zub, and Other Stories (1893). In addition, Pollock contributed 26 poems of "magazine verse" to Longman's from 1890 to 1905. He and Besant also wrote The Ballad-Monger, a stage adaptation of Théodore Faullain de Banville's Gringoire, which was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree
at the Haymarket Theatre
.
In 1894, Pollock left the Saturday Review and went to live at Chawton
in Hampshire
to devote himself to writing full time. He wrote novels on German student life, at least one book in French, Monsieur le Marquis de -- (1780-1793), Memoires Inédits Recueillis (1894), various plays, and also made several excursions into belles-lettres
. A second collaboration with Sir Walter Besant produced The Charm and Other Drawing-Room Plays (1896). The next year, he co-wrote Fencing (1897) as part of the Badminton series with F. C. Grove and Camille Prévost (Pollock then being considered the finest amateur fencer
in Britain) as well as King and Artist: A Romantic Play in Five Acts (1897) with Lilian Moubrey.
Two years later, he wrote Jane Austen: Her Contemporaries and Herself (1899), considered one of the most important works of literary criticism on the female author, and published a revised edition of Watts Phillips' The Dead Heart: A Story of the French Revolution (1900). He and his son Guy Cameron Pollock wrote a novel together, Hay Fever (1905), and wrote biographies of two of his friends titled Impressions of Henry Irving (1908) and The Art of the Hon. John Collier (1914). His final book was Icarian Flights (1920). His wife died in 1922; afterwards she was said to have been the inspiration for his poetry. Pollock lived in retirement until his own death on February 21, 1926.
Saturday Review (London)
The Saturday Review of politics, literature, science, and art was a London weekly newspaper established by A. J. B. Beresford Hope in 1855....
, a position he held from 1884 to 1894, but also had published various miscellaneous writings that included novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translated works between 1877 and 1920. He was also, at one time, considered one of the best amateur fencers in Great Britain.
Pollock was well known in Britain's literary circles during the Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
and was close friends with a number of writers, including Robert Lewis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Egerton Castle
Egerton Castle
Egerton Castle M.A., F.S.A. was a Victorian era author, antiquarian, and swordsman, and an early practitioner of reconstructed historical fencing, as well as the captain of the British épée and saber teams at the 1908 Olympics.He was born into a wealthy family; his maternal grandfather was the...
, W.E. Henley and Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
. He was also involved in collaborations with Alexander Duffield, Sir Walter Besant, Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
, F. C. Grove and Camille Prévost and Lilian Moubrey.
A member of the esteemed Pollock family
Clan Pollock
Clan Pollock is an armigerous Scottish clan whose origin lies in a grant of land on the southern bank of the River Clyde, courtesy of King David I, to the sons of Fulbert the Saxon from Walter fitz Alan, the 1st High Steward of Scotland, in the 12th century. It is among the oldest recorded surnames...
, he was the second son of Sir William Frederick Pollock, 2nd Baronet and brother to lawyer Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet and George Frederick Pollock. He in turn was the father of newspaperman Guy Cameron Pollock, a longtime journalist for the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
and Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
, and managing editor of the Morning Post
Morning Post
The Morning Post, as the paper was named on its masthead, was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by The Daily Telegraph.- History :...
. Walter and Guy Pollock wrote a novel together in 1905.
Biography
Walter Pollock was born in London on February 21, 1850, the second son of Sir William Frederick Pollock, 2nd Baronet. His great-grandfather, Mr. David Pollock, was a member of the BritishBritish Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
royal court
Royal court
Royal court, as distinguished from a court of law, may refer to:* The Royal Court , Timbaland's production company*Court , the household and entourage of a monarch or other ruler, the princely court...
and saddler
Saddler
Saddler is both a skilled trade and a surname. As a trade, it refers to the occupation of making saddles.Saddler may refer to* Osmund Saddler* Sandy SaddlerAlso* Saddler, reporting name for the R-16 missile...
to King George III. One of his grand-uncles, Sir David Pollock, was the chief justice
Chief Justice
The Chief Justice in many countries is the name for the presiding member of a Supreme Court in Commonwealth or other countries with an Anglo-Saxon justice system based on English common law, such as the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the Court of Final Appeal of...
of Bombay, while another, Sir George Pollock, became a field marshal
Field Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
. His own father was an author and Queen's Remembrancer under Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
from 1874 to 1886, when the post was passed on to his brother George Frederick Pollock who continued to hold the title until the turn of the century
Turn of the century
Turn of the century, in its broadest sense, refers to the transition from one century to another. The term is most often used to indicate a non-specific time period either before or after the beginning of a century....
. His eldest brother, Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet, was a noted lawyer and frequently worked with him during his career.
Educated at Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, he graduated with a classical degree
Classical Tripos
The Classical Tripos is the taught course in classics at the University of Cambridge, equivalent to Literae Humaniores at Oxford. It is traditionally a three year degree, but for those who have not studied Latin and Greek at school a four year course has been introduced...
in 1871 and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple
Inner Temple
The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...
three years later. He developed an interest in literature and history and began lecturing at the Royal Institution, London
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
. Among the subjects he discussed included the works of Richelieu, Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French politician who served as the Minister of Finances of France from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing...
, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, Sir Francis Drake and Théophile Gautier
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
. In 1875, he joined the staff of the Saturday Review
Saturday Review (London)
The Saturday Review of politics, literature, science, and art was a London weekly newspaper established by A. J. B. Beresford Hope in 1855....
and became an assistant editor. It was around this time that he began courting Emma Jane Pipon, daughter of Colonel Pipon, Seigneur de Noirmont of Jersey, and the two were married in Chester
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
on January 11, 1876. Their first and only son, Guy Cameron Pollock, was born that same year.
It was while working for the publication that he first began writing professionally and co-wrote Marston: A Story of these Modern Times with Alexander J. Duffield in 1877. He also published literary critical works such as The Modern French Theatre (1878) and Lectures on French Poets (1879), English-language translations of works by Alfred de Musset
Alfred de Musset
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle from 1836.-Biography:Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris...
's and Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
, and a collection of poetic verses entitled Songs and Rhymes: English and French (1882) and Verses of Two Tongues (1884).
In 1884, Pollock succeeded Philip Harwood as editor of the Saturday Review and remained with the publication for the next 10 years. He became close friends with many members of Victorian Britain's literary circle including Robert Lewis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Egerton Castle
Egerton Castle
Egerton Castle M.A., F.S.A. was a Victorian era author, antiquarian, and swordsman, and an early practitioner of reconstructed historical fencing, as well as the captain of the British épée and saber teams at the 1908 Olympics.He was born into a wealthy family; his maternal grandfather was the...
, W.E. Henley and Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
. It is also alleged that he had an extramarital affair with English hostess Violet Hunt
Violet Hunt
Isobel Violet Hunt was a British author and literary hostess. Her father was the artist Alfred William Hunt, her mother the novelist and translator Margaret Raine Hunt. Her younger sister Venetia married the designer William Arthur Smith Benson .-Biography:Hunt was born in Durham; the family moved...
.
Another close friend and collaborator, Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
, worked with Pollock on the Saturday Review and published many of Lang's anonymous reviews and "middle" articles. Pollock continued writing, mostly fiction and poetry, and co-authored Uncle Jack (1885) with Sir Walter Besant and He (1887) with Andrew Lang. By himself, he wrote A Nine Men's Morrice (1889), Old and New (1890), The Seal of Fate (1891) and King Zub, and Other Stories (1893). In addition, Pollock contributed 26 poems of "magazine verse" to Longman's from 1890 to 1905. He and Besant also wrote The Ballad-Monger, a stage adaptation of Théodore Faullain de Banville's Gringoire, which was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
.
In 1894, Pollock left the Saturday Review and went to live at Chawton
Chawton
Chawton is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is 1.6 miles southwest of Alton, just south of the A31 which runs between Farnham and Winchester. The village is famous as the home of Jane Austen for the last eight years of her life...
in Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
to devote himself to writing full time. He wrote novels on German student life, at least one book in French, Monsieur le Marquis de -- (1780-1793), Memoires Inédits Recueillis (1894), various plays, and also made several excursions into belles-lettres
Belles-lettres
Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....
. A second collaboration with Sir Walter Besant produced The Charm and Other Drawing-Room Plays (1896). The next year, he co-wrote Fencing (1897) as part of the Badminton series with F. C. Grove and Camille Prévost (Pollock then being considered the finest amateur fencer
Fencing
Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...
in Britain) as well as King and Artist: A Romantic Play in Five Acts (1897) with Lilian Moubrey.
Two years later, he wrote Jane Austen: Her Contemporaries and Herself (1899), considered one of the most important works of literary criticism on the female author, and published a revised edition of Watts Phillips' The Dead Heart: A Story of the French Revolution (1900). He and his son Guy Cameron Pollock wrote a novel together, Hay Fever (1905), and wrote biographies of two of his friends titled Impressions of Henry Irving (1908) and The Art of the Hon. John Collier (1914). His final book was Icarian Flights (1920). His wife died in 1922; afterwards she was said to have been the inspiration for his poetry. Pollock lived in retirement until his own death on February 21, 1926.
External links
- http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=mediatype%3A(texts)%20-contributor%3Agutenberg%20AND%20(subject%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20Herries%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Pollock%2C%20W%2E%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20Herries%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Pollock%2C%20W%2E%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Walter%20Herries%20Pollock%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Walter%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22W%2E%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20Herries%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20Herries%2C%20Sir%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20W%2E%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%2C%201850-1926%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20Herries%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20W%2E%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Walter%20Herries%20Pollock%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Walter%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22W%2E%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Walter%20Herries%20Pollock%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Walter%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20title%3A%22W%2E%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Walter%20Herries%20Pollock%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Walter%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20description%3A%22W%2E%20H%2E%20Pollock%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20Herries%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Pollock%2C%20W%2E%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Pollock%2C%20Walter%20H%2E%20%28Walter%20Herries%29%22)Works by or about Walter Herries Pollock] at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books original editions color illustrated)