Maud Jean Franc (1827 - 1886)

Matilda Jane Evans (née Congreve) (7 August 1827 – 22 October 1886) was an Australian novelist, who wrote under the pseudonym Maud Jean Franc. Matilda was the elder daughter of Dr Henry Congreve and his wife Elizabeth Ann, née Jacob. The family moved to South Australia in 1852, started a school at Mount Barker and on 16 February 1860 married the Rev. Ephraim Evans, a Baptist minister, who died 6 April 1863. In 1860 Mrs Evans opened a school at Angaston which was still in existence in 1868. She wrote her first story, Marian; or the light of Some One's Home while she was at Mount Barker and it appears to have been immediately successful. The British Museum catalogue records an edition published at Bath in 1860, a second edition was published by John Darton and Company in 1861, and another edition published by Sampson Low appeared in the same year.