George Essex Evans

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George Essex Evans (June 18, 1863 - November 10, 1909) was an Australian poet.

Evans was born in London. His father, John Evans, Q.C., who was for five years a member of the House of Commons, died when the boy was only a few months old, and his education was directed by his mother. His schooldays were spent in Wales and at a college in Jersey, and he emigrated to Queensland, Australia when he was 17. He arrived in April 1881 and, after some experience on the land, obtained a position on the ship Queenslander. He entered the public service in 1888 and afterwards became district registrar at Toowoomba.

His first volume, The Repentance of Magdalene Despar, was published in 1891, and in 1892 and 1893 he was associated with J. T. Ryan in the production of an annual, The Antipodean. A third number appeared in 1897. In 1898 Loraine and other Verses was published, and in 1901 Evans won a prize of £50 for his "Ode for Commonwealth Day". Five years afterward, The Secret Key and other Verses which included part of the Loraine volume, was published. During the last two years of his life Evans did much writing on the resources of his state for the Queensland government. He died at Toowoomba. He married in 1899 Mrs Blanche Hopkins who survived him with one son. An edition of his Collected Verse was published in 1928, and there is a monument to his memory in Webb Park, Toowoomba.

He won a great reputation in his own state as a poet and as the author of patriotic verse, as in "Cymru", and his bush ballads, such as "The Women of the West," were popular.

In 1903, he was influential in forming the Austral Society^[1][2].

[edit] References

• Serle, Percival (1949). "Evans, George Essex". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.