Frederick Mullett Evans

Frederick Mullett Evans (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.

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. A business partnership as printer in Southampton with Francis Joyce was dissolved in 1829.

Bradbury & Evans, for a decade from 1830, were solely London printers, in Bouverie Street and then Lombard Street. 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.

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. Evans was responsible for proofs and payments. 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.

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. Thackeray commented in 1855 on his period with Punch, that the arrangements were always with Evans rather than Lemon. The Daily News launch of 1846, with Dickens as editor, proved however a costly failure that Evans regretted for decades. An arrangement of the 1840s with William Somerville Orr was dissolved in that year.

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