Walter Pollock was born in London on 21 February 1850, the second son of
Sir William Frederick Pollock, 2nd Baronet. His great-grandfather, Mr. David Pollock, was a member of the
British royal court and
saddler to King
George III. His grandfather was
Sir Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet, Lord
Chief Baron of the Exchequer, a high judicial appointment of which he was the penultimate holder. 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 20th 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. He became close friends with many members of Victorian Britain's literary circle including
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Rudyard Kipling, 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. 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 21 February 1926. == Fencing ==