He is best known as editor of the Saturday Review, a position he held from 1884 to 1894, but also had published various miscellaneous writings that included novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translated works between 1877 and 1920.

[2] Pollock was well known in Britain's literary circles during the Victorian era and was close friends with a number of writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Egerton Castle, W. E. Henley and Henry Irving.

He in turn was the father of newspaperman Guy Cameron Pollock, a longtime journalist for the Evening Standard and Daily Express, and managing editor of the Morning Post.

[6][7][11] He became close friends with many members of Victorian Britain's literary circle including Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling,[4] Oscar Wilde, Egerton Castle,[8] W. E. Henley and Henry Irving.

[11] He and Besant also wrote The Ballad-Monger, a stage adaptation of Théodore Faullain de Banville's Gringoire, which was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre.

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.

[10] 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)[5] as well as King and Artist: A Romantic Play in Five Acts (1897) with Lilian Moubrey.

[6] Two years later, he wrote Jane Austen: Her Contemporaries and Herself (1899),[10] considered one of the most important works of literary criticism on the female author,[14] and published a revised edition of Watts Phillips' The Dead Heart: A Story of the French Revolution (1900).