Louis Couperus

Louis Couperus
Louis Couperus in 1917
Born	Louis Marie-Anne Couperus (1863-06-10)10 June 1863 The Hague, Netherlands
Died	16 July 1923(1923-07-16) (aged 60) De Steeg, Netherlands
Occupation	Novelist
Years active	1878–1923

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus (The Hague, 10 June 1863 – De Steeg, 16 July 1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet. His oeuvre contains a wide variety of genres: lyric poetry, psychological and historical novels, novellas, short stories, fairy tales, feuilletons and sketches. Couperus is considered to be one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature. In 1923, he was awarded the Tollensprijs (Tollens Prize).

Couperus and his wife travelled extensively in Europe and Asia, and he later wrote several related travelogues which were published weekly.

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was born on 10 June 1863 at Mauritskade 11 in The Hague, Netherlands. He was the eleventh and youngest child of John Ricus Couperus (1816–1902) and Catharina Geertruida Reynst (1829–1893). Four of the ten siblings had died before Louis was born. Couperus was baptized on 19 July 1863 in the Église wallone in The Hague. When Louis reached the age of five, his youngest sister, Trudy, was twelve years old and his youngest brother, Frans, eleven. In The Hague he followed lessons at the boarding school of mr. Wyers, where he first met his later friend Henri van Booven. On 6 November 1872 the Couperus family left home, travelled by train to Den Helder and embarked on the steamboat Prins Hendrik, which would bring them to the Dutch East Indies. They arrived on 31 December 1872 in Batavia, where they spent the night at the then famous Hotel des Indes. The family settled in a house in Batavia, located on the Koningsplein and the mother of Couperus and his brother Frans (who was suffering from peritonitis) returned to the Netherlands in December 1873; his mother returned to the Dutch East Indies in April 1874. So Couperus spent part of his youth (1873–1878) in the Dutch East Indies, going to school in Batavia.