Percival Pollard, associated with several turn-of-the-century periodicals, should be chiefly remembered as a literary critic of the aesthetic-impressionist school. In introducing foreign literature and art, especially the European fin de siècle and avant-garde, Pollard is second only to James Gibbons Huneker. He denounced commercial timidity in publishing and criticism, "discovered" and boosted Ambrose Bierce, and influenced H. L. Mencken. As a writer of short stories and a novel, Pollard gained little renown. With even less success, he tried play writing. He mainly contributed to little magazines; occasionally he was also an editor.

His father, Joseph Pollard, was British and his mother, Marie Pollard, German; he was born in Greifswald, in the Prussian province of Pomerania, and spent his early years in Newcastle, England, where his grandfather was a rich coal merchant. After his parents divorced, his father, a grain merchant, married another German, a former language...