# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Evans, Edmund

​EVANS, EDMUND (1826–1905), wood-engraver and colour-printer, born in Southwark on 23 Feb. 1826, was son of Henry Evans by his wife Mary. Educated at a school in Jamaica Row kept by Bart Robson, an old sailor, he in November 1839, at the age of thirteen, became 'reading boy' at Samuel Bentley's printing establishment at Bangor House, Shoe Lane. On the suggestion of an overseer, who found that the boy had a talent for drawing, his parents apprenticed him in 1840 to Ebenezer Landells [q. v.], the wood-engraver. Birket Foster, one year senior to Evans, was articled to Landells at the same time, and the two pupils often joined in sketching excursions. On the completion of his apprenticeship in May 1847, Evans started business as a wood-engraver on his own account, taking small premises at first in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, and in 1851 moving to 4 Racquet Court. Orders soon came to him from the 'Illustrated London News' and from the allied firm of Ingram, Cooke & Co. In 1852 Birket Foster was preparing for Ingram, Cooke & Co. a set of illustrations to Madame Ida Pfeiffer's 'Travels in the Holy Land.' ​These were handed over to Evans, who engraved them for three printings, a key-block giving the outlines in brown, and two other blocks adding tints in buff and blue. This experiment led to further work in colour, notably the preparation of an illustrated cover, then quite a novelty, for Mayhew's 'Letters Left at the Pastry-cook's' (1853). This was printed in blue and red on a white paper; but, finding that the white cover easily soiled, Evans substituted a yellow paper with an enamel surface, which had an immediate popularity and was greatly in request for railway novels, whence the term 'yellowback.' During thirty years Evans produced a vast quantity of these and similar covers for various publishers.
Though he executed wood-engravings in black and white to illustrate Scott's poetical works (A. & C. Black, 1853-6), Cowper's 'Task' (Nisbet & Co., 1855-6), and other volumes, Evans became known from this time almost entirely as a colour engraver. His process of printing in oil colour from a series of wood blocks carried on the tradition which had descended from the early chiaroscuro engravers, and was almost identical with that of his immediate predecessor, George Baxter (1804–1867), except that he did not, like Baxter, use an engraved key plate of copper or steel.
Evans's first colour-printing of real importance as book illustration was for 'The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith' (1858), with pictures by Birket Foster. Foster made his drawings as usual on the block, and then coloured a proof pulled on drawing paper. This was followed most carefully by Evans, who bought the actual colours used by the artist, ground them by hand, and did the printing on a hand-press. Other successful publications between 1858 and 1860, with printing done in six to twelve colours on a hand-press, were 'Common Objects of the Sea Shore,' and 'Common Objects of the Country,' by the Rev. J. G. Wood, illustrated by W. S. Coleman [q. v. Suppl. II], and 'Common Wayside Flowers,' by T. Miller, containing drawings by Birket Foster. Another work, described by Evans as 'the most carefully executed book I have ever printed,' was 'A Chronicle of England' (1864), written and illustrated by James William E. Doyle [q. v. Suppl. I]. For that book, with its eighty-one illustrations, each produced by nine or ten colour-blocks, a hand press was employed for the last time. Evans also executed the first coloured plates presented the 'Graphic' to its readers, a double-page picture of the Albert Memorial (1872) and 'The Old Soldier,' from a water-colour drawing by Basil Bradley (1873).
It was, however, by the colour-printing of children's books by Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway, that Evans built his most enduring monument. From 1865 to 1869 he was occupied with the production of a series of six-penny toy-books, published partly by Ward & Lock and partly by Routledge, with illustrations in colour by Walter Crane. In 1877 Evans arranged on his own account with Crane to illustrate a child's book entitled 'The Baby's Opera.' A first edition of ten thousand copies at five shillings apiece was sold, and a second edition was soon in demand. The volume was followed by many others in which artist and colour-printer worked in combination. At the end of 1879 Evans made another venture with 'Under the Window,' by Kate Greenaway [q. v. Suppl. II], a book that won immediate popularity, and was the forerunner of a fruitful partnership. Evans also printed the well-known 'Graphic' pictures by Randolph Caldecott [q. v.] and, by persuading him to embark on illustrations for children's books, inaugurated the famous series which began in 1878 with 'John Gilpin' and closed in 1885 with 'The Great Panjandrum Himself.' These three artists thoroughly grasped the possibilities and limitations of Evans's reproductive process, and worked in simple lines and flat washes of decorative colour, which the engraver could reproduce almost in facsimile. Shortly before his death Evans admitted that colour-printing from wood must yield to the three-colour process.
In 1864 Evans married Mary Spence Brown of North Shields, a niece of Birket Foster, and went to live at the Surrey village of Witley, which was the home of an interesting group of artists and authors. George Eliot, J. C. Hook, R.A., Birket Foster, Charles Keene, and Mrs. Allingham all belonged to his circle, and Kate Greenaway was a frequent visitor at his house. Owing to ill-health, Evans retired from business in 1892, and settled at Ventnor, where he died on 21 Aug. 1905, being buried in Ventnor cemetery. His business is carried on by his two sons, Edmund Wilfred (b. 1869) and Herbert (b. 1871).
M. H.