Louis Esson was born at Leith, Edinburgh, in 1878. After his father's death, his mother brought him to Melbourne where he grew up in the home of his aunts and uncles. Esson was educated at the Carlton Grammar School and attended Melbourne University where he majored in English without taking a degree.
Esson's verse and sketches appeared in the Bulletin and the Lone Hand, but, disappointed with Australian culture, he left for London in 1904. Here he met the Irish playwrights J. M. Synge and W. B. Yeats who encouraged him to write country plays with an Australian background.
Esson returned to Australia in 1906, aiming to establish the Australian equivalent of the Irish National Theatre. His first collection of verse appeared in 1910 and by 1912 he had published three collections of plays. Included in these collections was Dead Timber, one of Esson's most admired plays. Esson travelled with his second wife, Hilda, to New York in 1916, and then on to London in 1918, writing long short stories for American magazines to cover expenses. While in London he saw his short play, The Drovers, performed.
Esson returned to Melbourne in 1921 and immediately formed the Pioneer Players with Vance Palmer and Stewart Macky. The folk drama performed during the 1920s was by no means a popular success, but the company showed that Australian drama could be written and performed on the commercial stage.
Esson moved to Sydney in the 1930s and was quite active in the literary scene, but his creative impulses subsided after several debilitating attacks of arthritis. He died in Sydney in 1943.
