Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Evans, Edward Payson

EVANS, Edward Payson, scholar, b. in Remsen, N. Y., 8 Dec., 1833. His father was a Welsh Presbyterian clergyman. Edward removed to Michigan in 1850, and was graduated at the state university in 1854. He taught in an academy in Hernando, Miss., in 1855, and was professor in Carroll college, Waukesha, Wis., in 1856-'7. After spending the years from 1857 till 1860 in travel and study abroad, he became in 1861 professor of modern languages in Michigan university, but resigned in 1870 and went abroad, where he has since been engaged in literary work. Since 1884 he has been connected with the “Allgemeine Zeitung,” of Munich, Bavaria, and has contributed to it many articles on the literary, artistic, and intellectual life of the United States. Prof. Evans has made a specialty of oriental languages. Besides many articles in reviews and magazines, he has published “Abriss der deutschen Literaturgeschichte” (New York, 1869) and a “Progressive German Reader” (1870), and has translated Stahr's “Life and Works of Lessing,” with an introduction (2 vols., Boston, 1866), and Coquerel's “First Historical Transformations of Christianity” (1867). He has in preparation (1887) a work on “Animal Symbolism in Art and Literature,” and a “History of German Literature,” to be completed in five volumes, two of which are already written, though not published.—His wife, Elizabeth Edson Gibson, author, b. in Newport, N. H., 8 March, 1833, was educated at a high school for young ladies in Ann Arbor, Mich., and has done some work as an artist. She has contributed essays and short stories to magazines, and has published “The Abuse of Maternity” (Philadelphia, 1875), and “Laura, an American Girl,” a novel (1884).