Alfred W. Pollard

Alfred William Pollard (1859 – March 8, 1944) was an English bibliographer, widely credited for bringing a higher level of scholarly rigor to the study of Shakespearean texts.

Pollard was educated at King's College School in London and St John's College at the University of Oxford. He joined the staff of the British Museum 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. He edited the journal "The Library" for thirty years (1903-34), and was Honorary Secretary of the Bibliographical Society from 1893 to 1934.

Pollard wrote widely on a range of subjects in English literature throughout his career, and collaborated with various scholars in specialized studies; he edited Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur", and a collection of "Fifteenth Century Poetry and Prose." He was a longtime friend of the poet A. E. Housman, and a close colleague of the prominent Shakespeare scholar Edmund Kerchever Chambers.

elected Works by Alfred W. Pollard

*"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.
*"Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: A Study in the Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays," 1909.
*"A New Shakespeare Quarto: Richard II," 1916.
*"Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates, And the Problem of the Transmission of his Text," 1917.
*"The Foundations of Shakespeare's Text," 1923.
*"Shakespeare's Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More" (with W .W. Greg, Edward Maunde Thompson, 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.
*"English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes; Specimens of the Pre-Elizabethan Drama," Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 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.

ee also

* Joseph Quincy Adams
* G. E. Bentley
* Andrew Gurr
* Alfred Harbage
* Cyrus Hoy
* Kenneth Muir
* T. M. Parrott
* Samuel Schoenbaum
* Charles William Wallace

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 Bibiliography of the Writings of Alfred W. Pollard." Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1938.

External links

*gutenberg author|id=Alfred_Pollard
*worldcat id|id=lccn-n80-38473