Frederick Mullett Evans

Frederick Mullett Evans (1804-70), like his brother Thomas, spent his youth in London and Melksham before training as a printer in Southampton and London. In 1830 he returned to Melksham to marry Maria Moule (1807-50), sister of Henry Moule, his brother-in-law. They promptly moved to London where he and William Bradbury (1799-1869) formed what would later become one of London’s premier printing firms, Bradbury and Evans, employing nearly 500 people at the height of its success. The firm was an early printer (and after 1845, the primary publisher) of Charles Dickens’s novels as well as his magazine, Household Words, and numerous novels by Wilkie Collins and William Thackeray. In December 1842, Bradbury and Evans became proprietors of the struggling new comic magazine Punch, an acquisition that significantly enhanced the stature of the firm.  Frederick Evans and his family lived for many years in Church Row, Stoke Newington, Hackney and later at 19 Queens Road West.  Both Evans and Bradbury retired from the firm in 1865 and were succeeded by their two sons, William Hardwick Bradbury and Frederick Mullett Evans, Jr. Frederick, Sr., lost most of his money in a failed investment with the Charles Dickens, Jr. (1837-96), his son-in-law, and faced bankruptcy in 1868. The younger Evans retired in 1872, after which the name of Evans was removed from the company’s logo.