Anglo-Welsh author whose bitter criticism of the Welsh religious and educational systems and the miserliness and narrowness of the Welsh people provoked a strong reaction within Wales.

Largely self-educated, Evans learned literary English from the King James Bible. He left Wales to go to England in the late 1880s as a draper's assistant; later he turned to journalism and editorial work. His early volumes of short stories—My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales (1915), Capel Sion (1916), My Neighbours: Stories of the London Welsh (1919)—and novels—Nothing to Pay (1930) and Wasps (1934)—are caustic satires undiluted by sympathy. When he returned to Wales about 1940, he reversed his previous stance and wrote short stories praising the Welsh.