Millard's bibliography was instrumental in enabling Wilde's literary executor, Robert Baldwin Ross, to establish copyright on behalf of his estate.
He was the second son of Dr James Elwin Millard, an Anglican clergyman and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dora Frances Sclater.
[2] After graduating, Millard taught at Ladycross Preparatory School in Bournemouth and then at his own school—a Catholic establishment in Woodford Wells, Essex, which he left during 1904 for reasons that remain obscure.
He pleaded guilty to avoid a third more serious charge of sodomy, which carried a maximum penalty of ten years' penal servitude, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour.
Elwin Millard, at St Edmund's vicarage in Forest Gate, East London and Robert Ross helped him obtain a position at The Burlington Magazine, edited by More Adey and Roger Fry.
[8] Around 1900, Millard began his compilation and collection of Wildeana in earnest, collaborating with Robert Ross and another scholar of Wilde's works, Walter Edwin Ledger, and he continued to acquire material on and off from much of his life.
[20] When Garratt was arrested for importuning, Millard appeared in court to speak on his behalf, and a report of the trial in Reynolds Newspaper linking their names attracted the attention of Douglas.
[22] In 1916, to avoid a second charge of gross indecency, Millard fled from London and spent several months on a farm in Northumberland before enlisting as a private in the Royal Fusiliers.
Millard's second conviction emboldened Douglas to publicly denounce Ross in court during Maud Allan's libel trial against the right-wing conspiracy theorist Noel Pemberton Billing.
[26] After his release, Millard began a new occupation as a dealer of antiquarian books and rare manuscripts, doing business from his wooden bungalow at 8 Abercorn Place in St John's Wood.
[28] In 1922, through a friendship with the young Anthony Powell, himself a keen collector, Millard began compiling materials for a bibliography of the artist and publisher Claud Lovat Fraser, which appeared the following year.