Welcome

A very warm welcome to Bradbury and Evans - An Inky Tale. This website aims to provide an in-depth exploration of the Victorian London printing and publishing house of Bradbury and Evans, printers and publishers for such literary luminaries as Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and the satirical magazine Punch. It will cover the lives of the proprietors William Bradbury and Frederick Mullett Evans, their respective families, employees of the business, and the wider printing industry. It is an on-going project which is still very much in its infancy, and will be updated regularly.

About the author - Jane E Chadwick

My interest in Bradbury and Evans began in 2011 as part of research I was undertaking into the family of my paternal grandmother Monica Jessie Bradbury. Census records showed that William Bradbury, the nephew of my 4x great grandfather, was a printer and publisher living in London, England, and so with my curiosity piqued I set about trying to find out more about him. These investigations have now become something of an all consuming passion, and have lead to certain parts of my home being filled with books, letters and ephemera connected with Bradbury and Evans. I soon discovered that although scholarly work had been undertaken into Bradbury and Evans' time as printers and publishers for Dickens, Thackeray etc and as proprietors of Punch magazine, very little had been recorded about their early years, particularly with regard to Bradbury's time with his first business partner William Dent. As I gathered more and more information I felt it might be useful to share this with the wider world and so this website was born.

I welcome any comments and feedback and can be contacted by email at whitefriars@virginmedia.com. Please feel free to use or link to materials from this website with appropriate citation. I would also be delighted to hear if you use this work or if it is helpful to you in any way.

I would like to offer my gratitude to my long suffering husband for visiting without complaint more churchyards than anyone should have to in one lifetime. Particular thanks for peering at illegible headstones in the pouring rain in Bedford, before my discovery days later that we had actually been at the wrong church. Grateful thanks also to my sons for their 'techy' help, especially my youngest for all his time and extreme patience in making this website happen - thank you.