Graham Pollard was born in Putney on 7 March 1903, the son of A.F. Pollard, historian, and first director of the Institute of Historical Research, and of Catherine Susannah Lucy, daughter of William Lucy, director of the Oxford iron-working company of that name. From Willington Preparatory School, Putney, Pollard went to Shrewsbury School (1916-20), where his housemaster was J.B. Oldham, the school librarian. He read history of Oxford, winning a scholarship to Jesus College in 1921, and became a partner in Birrell & Garnett in 1924, when he went down from Oxford. An appreciable part of this collection of letters and working papers belongs to the Birrell & Garnett period.

In 1934 Pollard, with John Carter, published An enquiry into the nature of certain nineteenth century pamphlets. Working papers for this are at the University of Texas. Notes for the catalogue of books at Waddesdon Manor compiled by him are at Waddesdon. All the other working papers that have survived are in this collection. In the 1930s Pollard was on the editorial board of Oxford Books on Bibliography, and there is a lively correspondence with John Johnson, Printer to the University, who was general editor of the series. Another notable sequence of letters was exchanged with Stanley Morison. After a short tenure of the special lectureship in the history of newspapers at the University of London, which was curtailed by the war, Pollard served in the Board of Trade from 1942 to 1959. Bibliographical publications were few during this period, but correspondence continued, and the collection includes many carbon copies of Pollard's own letters. After his retirement from the Board of Trade he resumed work on many bibliographical projects, including the medieval book trade in Oxford, on which he published comparatively little, but for which he accumulated a great deal of material.