George was born in 1868 near Bingen in the Prussian Rhine Province. His father, also Stephan George, was an inn keeper and wine merchant.
His schooling was successfully concluded in 1888 after which he spent time in London and in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soirées held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. His early travels also included Vienna where in 1891 he met, for the first time, Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
He began to publish poetry in the 1890s, while in his twenties. George founded and edited an important literary magazine called Blätter für die Kunst. He was also at the center of an influential literary and academic circle known as the George-Kreis, which included many of the leading young writers of the day, (for example Friedrich Gundolf and Ludwig Klages). In addition to sharing cultural interests, the circle reflected mystical and political themes. George and his writings were identified with the Conservative Revolutionary movement. He was a homosexual, yet exhorted his young friends to lead a celibate life like his own.
George's late and seminal work, Das neue Reich ("The New Empire"), was published in 1928. He dedicated the work, including the Geheimes Deutschland ("Secret Germany") written in 1922, to Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who, in 1944, took part in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It outlines a new form of society ruled by hierarchical spiritual aristocracy. George rejected any attempts to use it for mundane political purposes, especially National Socialism.