E. P. Evans

Edward Payson Evans (December 8, 1831 – March 6, 1917) was an American scholar, linguist, and educator. Educated at the University of Michigan, he taught modern languages in the United States before continuing his studies in Germany, where he spent much of his career. Evans wrote on German literature, comparative linguistics, animal trials, and the ethical status of animals. His books included Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology (1897), which discussed evolutionary theory, moral philosophy, and animal consciousness, and The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906), a study of historical legal proceedings against animals in Europe.

Biography

Evans was born in Remsen, New York, on December 8, 1831. His father was the Reverend Evan Evans, a Welsh Presbyterian clergyman. Evans earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan in 1854. He taught at an academy in Hernando, Mississippi, in 1855, and was a professor at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, from 1856 to 1857.

From 1858 to 1862, Evans studied at the University of Göttingen, the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. After returning to the United States, he became professor of modern languages at the University of Michigan. In 1868, he married Elizabeth Edson Gibson. In 1870, he resigned from Michigan and returned to Europe, where he collected material for a history of German literature and studied oriental languages.

While living in Munich, Evans worked regularly at the Royal Library of Munich and joined the staff of the political journal Allgemeine Zeitung in 1884. After his wife's death in 1911 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he returned to the United States. He lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.