Frederick Mullett Evans

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]

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 (1833–1902), 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]