Author: Evans, Robert Wilson
Biography:
EVANS, Robert Wilson (1789-1866: ODNB)
He was born on 30 Aug. 1789 and baptised 18 Feb. 1792 at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury, one of nine children of John Evans (1756-1846) (q.v.), surgeon, editor, cartographer, and poet of Llwyn-y-groes, near Oswestry, Wales, and his wife Jane Wilson. He was educated at Shrewsbury school and Trinity College Cambridge (matric. 1807, BA 1811, MA 1814, BD 1842, sometime Fellow 1813-1836). He won the chancellor’s medal in 1811 and was classical tutor at Trinity from 1813. He was ordained deacon (1815) and priest (1816) and held various parish livings until his college nominated him as vicar of Heversham, Westmorland, in 1842. His father died there in 1846 and two of his three unmarried sisters who lived with him also died there in 1862 and 1863. He was made Archdeacon of Westmorland in 1856 but retired due to ill health in 1865. He died at Heversham vicarage on 10 Mar. 1866, leaving an estate of under £10,000, to be administered by his brother and nephew, leaving provision for his remaining sister, Frances Louise. In The Rectory of Valehead, he offers a fictional account of an idyllic rural parish with a focus on the daily life of “the Christian family,” interspersed with hymns and other poems; it reached its 14th London edition in 1850. He was also well-known for collections of sermons and contributions to scripture and early church biography but he is now mostly admired for his vivid account of Victorian clerical life in The Bishopric of Souls (1842). Similarly, Hymns for the Christian Workman (1840) and Daily Hymns (1860) are less impressive than his Parochial Sketches, in Verse (1850). His treatise on hymnology appended to A Day in the Sanctuary (1843) and A Treatise on Versification (1852) have not attracted any scholarly interest. (ODNB 4 Nov. 2022; DWB [father and grandfather]; Edward Bickersteth, “Introductory Memoir,” The Bishopric of Souls [1877]; ancestry.co.uk 4 Nov. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 4 Nov. 2022; CCEd 4 Nov. 2022; Richard Williams, Montgomeryshire Worthies [1894], 66-68; Lancaster Guardian 17 March 1866; NPC will) AA
Other Names:
- the Rev. R. W. Evans