Son of a London antiquarian, and himself a member of the Archaeological Society, George Isaacs migrated to South Australia in 1851 and lived in Gawler, where he inaugurated the 'Humbug Society', in which he held an office known as 'The Surprising Sham'. A writer of sketches, poems, tales and caustic satirical pieces under the pseudonym 'A Pendragon', he founded the satirical journal The Critic (1862-1863)
, and contributed to Pasquin, The Bunyip and The Observer. He published what was a serious attempt at a literary journal, under the title Number One, but it did not survive beyond the first issue. He also edited an advertising pamphlet, Twenty-four Hours' Adventures of a New Arrival in South Australia (Adelaide: Alfred Waddy, 1866).
In the terminology of his day he was a 'thorough Bohemian with apparently no fixed object in life' (obituary, The Register 15 February 1876) and George F. Loyau says of him, 'A want of application and an abnormal incapacity to appreciate the value of time and money, marred what might have been a brilliant and useful career, and he died in Adelaide at an earlier age that perhaps would have been the case had he attended more strictly to rules adopted by those who reach the proverbial threescore and ten allotted to man.' (Representative Men of South Australia, p. 142).
He died at the Union Inn, Waymouth Street, after a short illness.
