Bradbury and Evans

{{Short description|English printing and publishing business}}

File:Site of Bradbury & Evans.jpg location of Bradbury and Evans.]]

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

Bradbury & Evans (est.1830) was a printing and publishing business founded in London by William Bradbury (1799–1869)England, Derbyshire, Church of England Parish Registers, 1538–1910. and Frederick Mullett Evans (1804–1870).General Register Office: Birth Certificates from the Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist Registry and from the Wesleyan Methodist Metropolitan Registry.{{cite book |first=John |last=Sutherland |author-link=John Sutherland (author) |chapter=Bradbury and Evans |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/stanfordcompanio0000suth_o9v4/page/79/mode/1up |title=The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction |pages=79-80 |year= 1989}}{{cite web |last=Shillingsburg |first=Peter L. |title=Chapter Three, Parts 1 & 2: Chapman and Hall and Bradbury and Evans |work=Victorian Web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wmt/pegasus/ch3a.html#bradbury}}

History

For the first ten years Bradbury & Evans were printers, then added publishing in 1841 after they purchased Punch magazine. As printers they did work for Joseph Paxton,{{cite book |last=Paxton |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Paxton |title=Paxton's Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants |publisher=Bradbury & Evans for Orr and Smith |year=1834 |url=https://archive.org/details/paxtonsmagazine111845paxt/page/n7/mode/2up }} Edward Moxon, and Chapman and Hall (publishers of Charles Dickens). Dickens left Chapman and Hall in 1844 and Bradbury and Evans became his new publisher. Bradbury and Evans published William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair in 1847 (as a serial), as well as most of his longer fiction. The firm operated from offices at no.11 Bouverie Street, no.85 Fleet Street, and no.4-14 Lombard Street, London (now Lombard Lane).{{cite book |title=Post Office London Directory |year= 1852 |url=http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/cdm/ref/collection/p16445coll4/id/180804 |page=628 |via=University of Leicester, Library }}{{Citation |publisher = J.C. Hotten |publication-place = London |title = Curiosities of London |edition=2nd |chapter=Whitefriars |chapter-url=https://archive.org/stream/curiositiesoflon00timbrich#page/832/mode/1up |first = John |last = Timbs |author-link=John Timbs |publication-date = 1867 |oclc = 12878129 }}

The inclusion of a monthly supplement, Household Narrative, in the weekly Household Words edited by Dickens was the occasion for a test case on newspaper taxation in 1851. Bradbury & Evans as publishers might have found themselves in the forefront of the ongoing campaign against "taxes on knowledge"; but the initial court decision went in their favour. The government then tried amending the existing law, to duck public opinion, reversing the stand taken by the revenue on the definition of "newspaper".{{cite book|first=Martin |last=Hewitt|title=The Dawn of the Cheap Press in Victorian Britain: The End of the 'Taxes on Knowledge', 1849-1869|url=https://archive.org/details/dawnofcheappress0000hewi/page/62/mode/up |date=5 December 2013|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-4725-1456-1|pages=62–63}}{{cite book|title=The Law Journal for the Year 1832-1949: Comprising Reports of Cases in the Courts of Chancery, King's Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer of Pleas, and Exchequer of Chamber|url=https://archive.org/details/lawjournalforye00unkngoog|year=1852|publisher=E. B. Ince|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lawjournalforye00unkngoog/page/n20 12]–24}}

After Bradbury & Evans broke with Dickens in 1859, they founded the illustrated literary magazine Once a Week, which competed with Dickens' new All The Year Round (the successor to Household Words). Among the artists who contributed illustrations to the firm's publications: John Leech{{citation |title=Exhibition of Pictures by Mr. John Leech |quote=Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly |date=May 24, 1962 |work=Saturday Review |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2zJUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA603 }} and John Tenniel. In 1861 Evans' daughter, Bessie Evans, married Dickens' son, Charles Dickens, Jr. The founders' sons, William Hardwick Bradbury (1832–1892) and Frederick Moule Evans (1832–1902), continued the business, with the much needed financial backing of William Agnew and his brother Thomas.{{cite book|editor-first1=Laurel |editor-last1=Brake|editor-first2=Marysa |editor-last2=Demoor|title=Dictionary of Nineteenth-century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland |year=2009|publisher=Academia Press|isbn=978-90-382-1340-8 |chapter=Evans, Frederick Moule |chapter-url= https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofnine0000unse_l0u0/page/208/mode/2up }}

See also

References

{{Reflist}}

Further reading

  • [https://books.google.com/books?id=Y7_nAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA481 Obituary of William Hardwick Bradbury] (1832-1892), son of the firm's founder. He continued the business as Bradbury, Evans & Co., circa 1865
  • {{cite book|author=Arthur William à Beckett|author-link=Arthur William à Beckett|title=À Becketts of "Punch": Memories of Father and Sons|url=https://archive.org/details/abeckettsofpunch00abec|year=1903|publisher=A. Constable and Co.}}
  • {{ cite journal |title=Dickens and the 'Daily News': Preliminaries to Publication |author= Gerald G. Grubb |journal= Nineteenth-Century Fiction |volume= 6 |year=1951 |jstor=3044173 }} (describes Bradbury and Evans' interaction with Charles Dickens)
  • {{ cite journal |title=Dickens and the 'Daily News': Resignation |author= Gerald G. Grubb |journal= Nineteenth-Century Fiction |volume= 7 |year=1952 |jstor= 3044134 }} (describes Bradbury and Evans' interaction with Charles Dickens)
  • {{cite book|author=Paul Schlicke|title=The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens |year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-964018-8 |chapter=Bradbury and Evans |chapter-url= https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont0000unse_n0l4/page/52/mode/2up }}