George Essex Evans was a Queensland poet, journalist and editor. He was born in 1863 in London, England, and in 1881 he migrated to the Darling Downs in Queensland, Australia. Evans published his first volume of poetry in 1891. In 1892-1893 and 1897, Evans edited the literary annual The Antipodean alongside John Tighe Ryan and, later, A.B. Paterson. Both attempts of the venture proved unsuccessful despite many of Australia's most famous authors and pubic figures contributing. Evans published his second volume of poetry in 1898. In 1899, Evans married and ran a small dairy near Toowoomba. From 1902 to 1905, he wrote a regular column for the Darling Downs Gazette and the Toowoomba Chronicle. In 1905 he started publishing his own weekly newspaper, The Rag, which circulated in southern Queensland for approximately fifty issues. Evans' third volume of poetry was published in 1906. He passed away in Toowoomba in 1909 after a short life filled with various medical challenges. After Evans' death, former Australian prime minister Alfred Deakin described Evans as Australia's 'national poet' and a memorial was built in his honour in Toowoomba.