The prominent journalist and editor Nikolai Polevoy was his father.

[1] A Saint Petersburg University graduate, for a decade Polevoy taught Russian literature and philology first at his alma mater, then at Novorossiysk and Warsaw Universities.

Polevoy in 6 volumes collected only a fraction of his vast and somewhat patchy legacy which he himself occasionally spoke dismissively of (admitting in his latter years to have been a "writing automaton... ready to churn out drama, novella, history, criticism, whatever").

[3] Still, Pyotr Polevoy has been credited as a tireless popularizer of both literature and history.

Among his notable works are the History of Russian Literature in Essays and Biographies (История русской литературы в очерках и биографиях, 1871) and the History of Russian Literature From the Ancient Times to Our Days (1900, in 3 volumes).