Frederick Mullett Evans Explained

Frederick Mullett Evans^[1] (1803–1870) was an English printer and publisher. He is known for his work as a partner from 1830 in Bradbury & Evans, who printed the works of a number of major novelists, as well as leading periodicals.^[2]

Life

He was the second son of Joseph Jeffries Evans and his wife Mary Anne Mullett, daughter of Thomas Mullett; his elder brother Thomas Mullett Evans was an early associate of Benjamin Disraeli.^{[3] [4] [5]} A business partnership as printer in Southampton with Francis Joyce was dissolved in 1829.^{[5] [6]}

With William Bradbury he founded Bradbury & Evans, who, for a decade from 1830, were solely London printers, in Bouverie Street and then Lombard Street.^[7] They had a modern press, powered by steam, and specialised in legal printing. They took on Chambers's Edinburgh Journal and other work for the Chambers brothers.^{[5] [8]}

The firm acquired Punch magazine in 1842; its editor Mark Lemon was to become a close friend of Evans, who sustained the social side of Punch, Bradbury being more comfortable with printing.^{[8] [9]} Evans was responsible for proofs and payments.^[10] The communal weekly dinner for Punch staff was also his domain. The magazine thrived on its paternalism as well as a willingness to pay salaries, and give credit.^[5]

During the 1840s, Evans lived at 7 Church Row, Stoke Newington, where both W. M. Thackeray and Charles Dickens visited. It had earlier belonged to Benjamin D'Israeli, grandfather of the Prime Minister.^[11] Thackeray commented in 1855 on his period with Punch, that the arrangements were always with Evans rather than Lemon.^[12] The Daily News launch of 1846, with Dickens as editor, proved however a costly failure that Evans regretted for decades.^[5] An arrangement of the 1840s with William Somerville Orr was dissolved in that year.^[13]

In the 1850s, Bradbury & Evans published Household Words, the weekly edited by Charles Dickens. But a disagreement came to a head in 1858/9, when Punch would not run an announcement that Dickens was separating from his wife.^[14] Two new publications resulted, All the Year Round run by Dickens in competition with Once a Week, which was edited successfully by Samuel Lucas.^{[15] [16]} Also involved in the contractual basis of Household Words were John Forster and William Henry Wills.^[17] The quarrel had a personal impact on Evans, whose daughter married Dickens's eldest son, with Dickens refusing to attend the wedding and reception.^[18]

A trustee of the estate of Edward Moxon (died 1858), who published Tennyson and Swinburne, Evans pursued John Camden Hotten who was pirating Tennyson's works.^[19] Evans and Bradbury retired from running the firm in 1865, with their sons taking over:^[20] William Hardwick Bradbury and Frederick Moule Evans. The arrangement broke down in 1872, with Frederick Moule Evans being forced out, and the company became Bradbury, Agnew & Co.^[21]

Evans died on 24 June 1870 at 18 Albert Road, Regent's Park, London, his son's house.^[22]

Family

Evans married Maria Moule (died 1850), youngest daughter of George Moule of Melksham, on 21 October 1830.^{[3] [23]} His sister, Mary Mullett Evans, second daughter of Joseph Jeffries Evans, had married Henry Moule, brother of Maria, on 1 July 1824; Henry was the sixth son of George Moule.^{[24] [25] [26] [27]}

Frederick and Maria had 12 children, eight of whom survived to become adults.^[5] They included:

• Frederick Moule (1883–1902), the eldest son, who married Amy Lloyd, daughter of Richard Lloyd of Henley, in 1859.^{[21] [28]}
• Margaret Moule, the eldest daughter, who married the barrister Robert Orridge (died 1866) in 1860.^{[29] [30]}
• Elisabeth Matilda Moule (Bessie), who married Charles Dickens, Jr. in November 1861, against his father's wishes.^[21]
• Horace (born 1841), who became a general and was knighted, and married in 1866 Elizabeth Annie Tresidder, daughter of John Nicholas Tresidder.^[23]

There were also Tom, Lewis, Godfrey and a further daughter.^[21]

Frederick was nicknamed "Pater", is described as "jovial, Pickwickian", and was taken by contemporaries as the typical Victorian paterfamilias.^[2]

Notes and References

1. Also Frederick Mullet Evans, Frederic Mullet Evans, Frederic Mullett Evans
2. Book: Paul Schlicke. The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens: Anniversary Edition. 3 November 2011. OUP Oxford. 978-0-19-964018-8. 53.
3. News: Marriages. 21 October 1830. Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette. 3. British Newspaper Archive. 19 May 2016.
4. Book: N. Roe. English Romantic Writers and the West Country. limited. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 978-0-230-22374-5. 110. 2010-05-28.
5. 76344. Robert L.. Patten. Patrick. Leary. Evans, Frederick Mullett.
6. Book: The London Gazette. 1829. T. Neuman. 336.
7. Book: John Sutherland. The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. 13 October 2014. Routledge. 978-1-317-86333-5. 76.
8. Book: Laurel Brake. Marysa Demoor. Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. 2009. Academia Press. 978-90-382-1340-8. 71.
9. Book: Alan R. Young. Punch and Shakespeare in the Victorian Era. 2007. Peter Lang. 978-3-03911-078-0. 50.
10. Book: David Finkelstein. Print Culture and the Blackwood Tradition. 1 February 2015. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. 978-1-4426-5824-0. 152.
11. A P Baggs, Diane K Bolton and Patricia E C Croot, 'Stoke Newington: Growth, Church Street', in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8, Islington and Stoke Newington Parishes, ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 163-168. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp163-168 [accessed 20 May 2016].
12. Book: Patrick Leary. Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London: The Punch Circle, 1858–1874. 2002. Indiana University. 192 note 34.
13. Book: The London Gazette. 1846. T. Neuman. 3566.
14. Book: Harriet Martineau. Elisabeth Sanders Arbuckle. Harriet Martineau's Letters to Fanny Wedgwood. registration. 1983. Stanford University Press. 978-0-8047-1146-3. 184 note 9.
15. Book: Kathryn Ledbetter. Tennyson and Victorian Periodicals: Commodities in Context. 9 March 2016. Routledge. 978-1-317-04624-0. 53.
16. Book: Lesley Higgins. The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Diaries, Journals, and Notebooks. 27 August 2015. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-953400-5. 322 note 489.
17. Book: Laurel Brake. Marysa Demoor. Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. 2009. Academia Press. 978-90-382-1340-8. 227–.
18. Book: Paul Schlicke. The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens: Anniversary Edition. 3 November 2011. OUP Oxford. 978-0-19-964018-8. 55–6.
19. Simon Eliot, Hotten: Rotten: Forgotten? An Apologia for a General Publisher, Book History Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 61–93, at pp. 84–5. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30227312
20. 76346. Robert L.. Patten. Patrick. Leary. Bradbury, William.
21. 76345. Robert L.. Patten. Patrick. Leary. Evans, Frederick Moule.
22. Book: Bookseller: The Organ of the Book Trade. 1870. J. Whitaker. 572.
23. Web site: The County Families of the United Kingdom; or, Royal manual of the titled and untitled aristocracy of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Walford. Edward. 1919. Internet Archive. R. Hardwicke. 441–2. 19 May 2016. London.
24. Book: Dod's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland, Including All the Titled Classes. 1914. 399.
25. News: Married. 9 July 1824. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal. 3. British Newspaper Archive. 18 May 2016.
26. News: Marriages. 25 August 1860. Bell's Weekly Messenger. 8. British Newspaper Archive. 18 May 2016.
27. 19426. W. H.. Brock. Moule, Henry.
28. Book: The Spectator. 1859. F.C. Westley. 1009.
29. Book: The Gentleman's Magazine. 1866. R. Newton. 291.
30. Book: Lillian Nayder. The Other Dickens: a life of Catherine Hogarth. 1 April 2012. Cornell University Press. 978-0-8014-6506-2. 278.