Henry Graham Pollard (known as Graham Pollard) (7 March 1903 – 15 November 1976) was a British

bookseller Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of libra ...

and

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 ...

Early life

Pollard was the son of the historian

Albert Pollard Albert Frederick Pollard, FBA (16 December 1869 – 3 August 1948) was a British historian who specialized in the Tudor period. He was one of the founders of the Historical Association in 1906. Life and career Pollard was born in Ryde o ...

and was born in

Putney Putney () is a district of southwest London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. History Putney is an ancient paris ...

, London on 7 March 1903. After studying at

Shrewsbury School Shrewsbury School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13 –18) in Shrewsbury. Founded in 1552 by Edward VI by Royal Charter, it was originally a boarding school for boys; girls have been admitted into ...

, Pollard studied history for one year at

University College, London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

before winning a

scholarship A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need. Scholars ...

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship S ...

in 1921, obtaining a third-class degree in history in 1924. At Oxford he was part of the

Hypocrites' Club The Hypocrites' Club was one of the student clubs at Oxford University in England. Its motto in Greek, from an Olympian Ode by Pindar, was ''Water is best''. This led to the members being called ''Hypocrites'', due to the fact that beer, wine an ...

. In that year he married

Kay Beauchamp Kathleen Mary 'Kay' Beauchamp (27 May 1899 – 25 January 1992) was a leading light in the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1920s. She helped found ''The Daily Worker'' (later '' The Morning Star'') and was a local councillor in Finsbury. ...

, pioneering Communist and women's rights campaigner. (Their marriage was dissolved in 1972).

Career

Even whilst he was a student, he was well known as a book collector, and bought part of a booksellers' business (Birrell and Garnett) in London. He became managing director in 1927, with the company producing many noted catalogues in the 1920s and 1930s, some of which were to become standard works of reference. Pollard's knowledge of his subject was displayed in his contributions to ''

The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature The ''Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature'' is an encyclopaedic bibliography of literature in English published by the Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. G ...

'' and in his lectures and articles. With John Carter, he wrote ''An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets'' (1934), exposing the prominent book collector Thomas J. Wise as a fraud. In 1937, Harry Carter,

Ellic Howe Ellic Paul Howe (20 September 1910 – 28 September 1991) was a British author who wrote extensively on occultism and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as well as on typography and military history. During World War II he worked for Britain's ...

, Alfred F. Johnson,

Stanley Morison Stanley Arthur Morison (6 May 1889 – 11 October 1967) was a British typographer, printing executive and historian of printing. Largely self-educated, he promoted higher standards in printing and an awareness of the best printing and typefaces o ...

and Graham Pollard started to produce a list of all known pre-1800 type specimens. The list was published in '' The Library'' in 1942. However, because of the war, many libraries at the European continent were not accessible anymore. In 1939, the bookshop partnership ended and Pollard became a special lecturer at University College, London before joining the Board of Trade in 1942; whilst this was supposedly a temporary appointment, he remained until retirement in 1959. He maintained his bibliographical interests, publishing an edition of ''The Earliest Directory of the Book Trade'' by John Pendred (1785), and lecturing in Cambridge shortly before his retirement. During his retirement, he was president from 1960 to 1962 of the London Bibliographical Society, which awarded him its gold medal in 1969, and was

Reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

in Bibliography 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 ...

in 1961, lecturing on the book trade in medieval Oxford. He also lectured in the United States in 1973, and received a volume of essays published in his honour by the Oxford Bibliographical Society in 1975. He died at the Radcliffe Infirmary on 15 November 1976. In 2018, it was alleged in Henry Hemming's ''M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster'' that Pollard spied on the Communist Party for Maxwell Knight and the British security services.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollard, Graham 1903 births 1976 deaths British bibliographers British booksellers Civil servants in the Board of Trade Alumni of University College London Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Academics of University College London Academics of the University of Oxford People from Putney