Alfred George StephensPrint Page

The Plaque commemorates Australia`s first notable literary critic, Alfred George Stephens who was born in Toowoomba. 

From 1888 to 1893 Stephens edited two country newspapers, the Gympie Miner (1888-90) and the Cairns Argus (1891-92). He wrote leaders for Gresley Lukin`s Brisbane Boomerang (1891), and published two spirited and cogent political pamphlets. Stephens was invited to join the Bulletin as junior sub-editor and he did so in January 1894 . In his creative period, from 1894 to about 1916, Stephens wrote the criticism and produced the books on which his literary reputation now stands. Within two years he had transformed the inside front cover of the red-jacketed Bulletin from advertising space for books into the fully-fledged literary column with which his name is now linked. In the process the anonymous `A.G.S.`, described by Joseph Furphy as `the three-initialled terror`, became the country`s most influential, widely read and respected literary critic.

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