EVANS, Edmund (1826-1905) — London
Engraver & colour printer. Printed William Nicholson, The London Post Office map ca. 1857; engraved & printed Sir John Gilbert, The pictorial missionary map of the world 1861, for James Nisbet; The pictorial map of Palestine 1862, again for James Nisbet.
Born in Southwark 23 Feb 1826 and baptised 9 Apr 1826 at St. Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey, the son of Henry Evans, a cooper, and his wife Mary Wood, both born in Bermondsey in the mid-1790s, who had married in 1820. Educated at Jamaica Row by an old sailor named Bart Robson. Impeded by a stutter, at thirteen he came an errand boy for the publisher Samuel Bentley. Recognising his talent for drawing, Bentley arranged an apprenticeship with the well-known wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells (1808-1860). Alongside fellow apprentices Myles Birket Foster and John Greenaway, his duties included delivering proofs to well-known artists and authors, including Charles Dickens. Landells helped launch Punch magazine in 1841 and Evans became one of its earliest artists. A short autobiography compiled towards the end of his life (published in 1967 as ‘The reminiscences of Edmund Evans’) charted his progress from the end of his apprenticeship in 1847 to becoming a printer of covers for yellowback novels — it was apparently Evans who introduced the use of yellow for these eye-catching covers — then as a printer of toy and picture books for children, in association with the publishers Routledge & Warne, experimenting with the increasingly complex use of multiple wooden block overlays (chromoxylography). He worked with famous illustrators such as Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Richard Doyle to produce some of the best-known and most admired children’s books of the nineteenth century. In 1861, still living at the business premises, he was employing sixteen men and ten boys — “I had to direct the engravers to the direction of the lines in the colour blocks, and the printers for the tones of the inks for printing, often mixing the inks”. On 23 Aug 1864, Evans married Mary Brown (1840-1923), from North Shields, with whom he had several children, at St. Peter & St. Paul, Godalming. She was apparently Myles Birket Foster’s niece, and the daughter of a starch manufacturer. Evans exhibited eight etchings at the Royal Academy and elsewhere 1868-1880. By 1871, he was employing twenty men and forty boys — figures increased to twenty-five men and fifty boys by 1881. In 1892, Evans retired, turning the printing business over to his sons Edmund Wilfred (1869-1943) and Herbert Evans (1871-1962), and later moving to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, where he had holidayed in 1891. Evans died 21 Aug 1905 and was buried in Ventnor cemetery, survived by two sons and three daughters. Probate on effects of £10,428.8s.1d. (later re-sworn at £11,098.18s.1d.) was granted to his widow and the two sons 13 Oct 1905. A substantial number of Evans’ original blocks are held at the St. Bride Printing Library and there are numerous books and proofs in the Constance Meade collection at the Bodleian, while an archive of correspondence with Walter Crane is in the University of Manchester Library.
Wine Office Court — 1850
4 Racquet Court, Fleet Street — 1851-1892
195 Albany Road, Camberwell (home) — 1851
— and 116 & 119 Fleet Street
Wormley Hill House, Godalming (home) — 1865-1898
Belgrave View, Zigzag Road, Ventnor (home) — 1901-1905
BM. BNA. Burch. Census 1841-1901. Engen (1985). Graves (1901) (1905). Hyde. LHD. LMA. ODNB. Wakeman & Bridson.