Bergen Evans

Bergen Baldwin Evans (September 19, 1904 – February 4, 1978) was an American lexicographer, a Rhodes Scholar, a Harvard College graduate, a Northwestern University professor of English, and a television host. Evans became known as the question supervisor, or "authority," for the television series $64,000 Question. His books include Word-A-Day Vocabulary Builder (1963), and the annotated Dictionary of Quotations (1993).

In the first half of the 1953–1954 television season, Evans hosted the ABC panel discussion series Of Many Things, which as it title indicates focused on a plethora of items of interest to the public. Mitch Miller, the band leader, was among his guests.^[1]

Evans's A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (1957), cowritten with his sister Cornelia, produced an apparent spin-off: the television show The Last Word, which he hosted Sundays on CBS, from 1957 to 1959.^[2] Listeners were encouraged to send in questions that pertain to spelling, punctuation, usage, and pronunciation. These questions were put to a panel of experts from various professional fields. Sound recordings of broadcasts for 1957-05-18 and 1957-05-25 are archived with the Library of Congress. The New Yorker commented, "I'd take more pleasure in discussions schola'ly / If Bergen Evans wouldn't laugh so jollily."^[3]

Evans is highly regarded as one of the early proponents of a movement now known as skepticism. He penned two of the earliest works in the field, The Natural History of Nonsense (1946) and The Spoor of Spooks and Other Nonsense (1954).

Published works

• Comfortable Words. Illustrated by Tomi Ungerer. New York, Random House [1962] 379 p. illus. 24 cm.
• A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, by Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans. New York, Random House [1957] viii, 567 p. 26 cm.
• Dictionary of Mythology, Mainly Classical. Lincoln [Neb.] Centennial Press [1970] xviii, 293 p. illus. 22 cm.
• Dictionary of Quotations / collected and arranged and with comments by Bergen Evans. New York, Delacorte Press [1968] lxxxix, 2029 p. 24 cm.
• Fifty Essays, edited by Bergen Evans. Boston, Little, Brown, and company [1936.] xii, 363 p. 19½ cm.
• The Life of Samuel Johnson; Boswell, James, 1740–1795 abridged, with an introd. by Bergen Evans. New York, Modern Library [1952] xv, [1], 559 p. 19 cm.
• The Making of English. Bradley, Henry, 1845–1923. With an introd. by Bergen Evans, and additional material and notes by Bergen Evans and Simeon Potter. New York, Walker [1967] vii, 209 p. 21 cm.
• The Natural History of Nonsense, by Bergen Evans. New York, A. A. Knopf, 1946. ix, 275, x p., 1 l. 22 cm.
• The Psychiatry of Robert Burton, by Bergen Evans, in consultation with George J. Mohr, M.D. New York, Columbia University Press, 1944. ix p., 1 l., 129 p. front. (port., facsim.) 23 cm.
• The Spoor of Spooks, and Other Nonsense. New York, Knopf, 1954. 295 p. 22 cm.
• The Word-A-Day Vocabulary Builder. New York, Random House [1963] viii, 216 p. 24 cm.
• Your Car is Made to Last, by Herman Bishop and Bergen Evans. New York, Putnam [1942] xi, 186 p. 20 cm.

References

External links

• Bergen Evans (1904–1978) PAPERS, 1921–1978. biography is attached to the holdings inventory.
• Bergen Evans at Find a Grave
• The Natural History of Nonsense