Sebastian Evans (2 March 1830 – 19 December 1909) was an English journalist and political activist, known also as a man of letters and an artist. He helped to form the

National Union of Conservative Associations The National Conservative Convention (NCC), is the most senior body of the Conservative Party's voluntary wing. The National Convention effectively serves as the Party's internal Parliament, and is made up of its 800 highest-ranking Party Office ...

Life

Born on 2 March 1830 at

Market Bosworth Market Bosworth is a market town and civil parish in western Leicestershire, England. At the 2001 Census, it had a population of 1,906, increasing to 2,097 at the 2011 census. It is most famously near to the site of the decisive final battle o ...

, Leicestershire, he was the youngest son of

Arthur Benoni Evans Arthur Benoni Evans (1781–1854) was a British writer. Evans was born at Compton Beauchamp in the English county of Berkshire (now in Oxfordshire), on 25 March 1781. His father, the Rev. Lewis Evans, vicar of Froxfield, Wiltshire, was a well-kn ...

by his wife Anne, daughter of Captain Thomas Dickinson, R.N. Sir John Evans was his elder brother and the poet Anne Evans his elder sister. After early education under his father at the Market Bosworth grammar school, he won a scholarship in 1849 at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1853 and proceeding M.A. in 1857. On leaving university, Evans became a student at Lincoln's Inn on 29 January 1855, but was shortly appointed secretary of the Indian Reform Association, and in that capacity was the first man in England to receive news of the

Indian Rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...

. That year he resigned the secretaryship and turned a talent for drawing to use, becoming manager of the art department of the glass-works of Messrs. Chance Bros. & Co., at Oldbury, near Birmingham. This position he held for ten years and designed many windows, including one depicting the

Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is dep ...

legend for the International Exhibition of 1862. While working for the Indian Reform Association, Evans had met

John Bright John Bright (16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies. A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn La ...

, and at Birmingham he made friends with

Joseph Chamberlain Joseph Chamberlain (8 July 1836 – 2 July 1914) was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually served as a leading imperialist in coalition with the C ...

. In 1867 Evans left the glassworks to become editor of the ''

Birmingham Daily Gazette The ''Birmingham Gazette'', known for much of its existence as ''Aris's Birmingham Gazette'', was a newspaper that was published and circulated in Birmingham, England, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Founded as a weekly publicatio ...

'', a conservative paper. In 1868 he unsuccessfully contested Birmingham as a conservative in the general election and helped to form the

. In the same year he took the degree of LL.D. at Cambridge. In 1870 Evans left the ''Gazette'' for a legal career. On 17 November 1873 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn and joined the

Oxford circuit The courts of assize, or assizes (), were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes ex ...

. He built up a practice, but still wrote leading articles for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'' and contributing articles and stories, mostly with a tendency to the supernatural, to ''Macmillan's'' and ''Longman's'' magazines. In 1878 he shared in founding ''The People'', a weekly conservative paper and edited it for its first three years. He took over the editorship for a period of the ''Birmingham Daily Gazette'', when its editor died the eve of the general election of 1886. In the early 1890s, Evans became involved in the

Neo-Jacobite Revival The Neo-Jacobite Revival was a political movement that took place during the 25 years before the First World War in the United Kingdom. The movement was monarchist, and had the specific aim of replacing British parliamentary democracy with a restor ...

, joining the

Order of the White Rose The Order of the White Rose of Finland ( fi, Suomen Valkoisen Ruusun ritarikunta; sv, Finlands Vita Ros’ orden) is one of three official orders in Finland, along with the Order of the Cross of Liberty, and the Order of the Lion of Finland. T ...

. Evans knew leading literati of the mid-Victorian period and was later a close friend of

Edward Burne-Jones Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August, 183317 June, 1898) was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman ...

, who illustrated his history of the "Graal". Towards the end of his life he retired to Abbot's Barton,

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of ...

, where he died on 19 December 1909.

Works

While an undergraduate Evans published a volume of sonnets on the death of the Duke of Wellington (1852). His other published collections of poems were: *''Brother Fabian's Manuscripts and other Poems'', 1865. *''Songs and Etchings'', 1871. *''In the Studio, a Decade of Poems'', 1875. He translated Francis of Assisi's 'Mirror of Perfection' (1898) and

Geoffrey of Monmouth Geoffrey of Monmouth ( la, Galfridus Monemutensis, Galfridus Arturus, cy, Gruffudd ap Arthur, Sieffre o Fynwy; 1095 – 1155) was a British cleric from Monmouth, Wales and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography ...

's ''History'' (1904), and with his son Francis ''Lady Chillingham's House Party'', adapted from Édouard Pailleron's ''Le Monde où l'on s'ennuie'' (1901). In 1881 he re-edited his father's ''Leicestershire Words'' for the

English Dialect Society The English Dialect Society was the first dialect society founded in England. It was founded in 1873 but wound up after the publication of Joseph Wright's ''English Dialect Dictionary'' had begun. History Such a society was first proposed by Ald ...

. Evans was a translator in verse and prose from mediaeval French, Latin, Greek, and Italian. In 1898 he published ''The High History of the Holy Graal'' (new edit. 1910 in ''

Everyman's Library Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon. It is currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent (itself later a division of Weidenfeld & N ...

''), a version of the old French romance of ''

Perlesvaus ''Perlesvaus'', also called ''Li Hauz Livres du Graal'' (''The High Book of the Grail''), is an Old French Arthurian romance dating to the first decade of the 13th century. It purports to be a continuation of Chrétien de Troyes' unfinished ''Perc ...

'', as well as an original study of the legend in ''In Quest of the Holy Graal''. Evans exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere pictures in oils, water colours and black and white, and practised wood-carving, engraving and book-binding.

Family

In 1857 Evans married Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Francis Bennett-Goldney, one of the founders of the London Joint Stock Bank. Of two sons, Sebastian and Francis, the latter took the name

Francis Bennett-Goldney Major Francis Bennett-Goldney (1865 – 26 July 1918) was an antiquary, Member of Parliament (MP) for Canterbury and former Mayor of Canterbury, who died during World War I. He was born Francis Evans, the son of Sebastian Evans, in Mosele ...

, and went into politics.

Notes

;Attribution

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Evans, Sebastian 1830 births 1909 deaths English male journalists English translators 19th-century English painters English male painters 19th-century British translators 19th-century British male writers Neo-Jacobite Revival