Davies on A Wig Without a Home: The Comedic Wisdom of Sir Frederick Pollock

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University Law School; The Green Bag; has published A Wig Without a Home: The Comedic Wisdom of Sir Frederick Pollock in volume 29 of the Green Bag 2d (2026). Here is the abstract.

Frederick Pollock (1845-1937) was the Green Bag’s kind of scholar. The first half of this paper consists of a sketch of his career and character, followed by a closer look at his sense of humor and the roles it played in his work. The second half of the paper is in two sections. First, there is a full republication of the text of a tiny book — a short story by Pollock titled “Queen Titania’s Chancellor”— that for nearly a century sat unnoticed on a bookshelf in the library of the Queen’s Dolls’ at Windsor Castle, until Elizabeth Clark Ashby (Curator of Books and Manuscripts in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle) gave Pollock’s miniature masterpiece some long-overdue and well-deserved attention in her 2024 book (full-sized), “The Miniature Library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House.” Second, there is a close (but incomplete) reading and analysis of that tiny text. If there are any lessons to be drawn from this paper, perhaps they are that greatness need not always be cloaked in dignity, and that Jack Point was not the only wit who could “teach you with a quip, if I’ve a mind” or “trick you into learning with a laugh.”

Download the abstract from SSRN at the link.