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| Louis Couperus - Life and Work (Part 1)|

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Louis Marie Anne Couperus (1863-1923) grew up in the sort of ##bourgeois environment that features in many of the novels for which he is still famous today, including Eline Vere (1889), Noodlot (1890), and Van oude menschen, de dingen die voorbijgaan (1906). His father was a councillor at the Higher Court of Justice, both in The Hague and the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia); his mother was of noble descent.

Though born in the Netherlands, Couperus spent most of his youth in the Dutch Indies, more particularly in the capital Batavia (present-day Jakarta) where he went to school. When the family returned to The Hague in 1878, Couperus visited the 'Hogere Burgerschool' but failed to complete his studies there. He was advised to concentrate on the study of Dutch, which would prepare him for a career as a teacher. Although Couperus took this advice to heart, he would never enter the teaching profession.

It is during these student years that Couperus started to write his first poetry. However, the style he favoured was dismissed as too artificial and precious. When his first collections Een lent van vaerzen (1884) and Orchideeën (1886) were published, the influential poet-critic Willem Kloos (>link), for instance, wrote peevishly that Couperus 'builds himself little temples of sugar and decorates them with tinsel, while cooing rococo sentiments with a little, waxen voice, revelling in the colourful and sweet banality of a fashion designer's ideals'. This was hardly a promising start. Then, on 17th June1888, the first episode of Eline Vere appeared in The Hague's local paper, Het vaderland, and soon the whole novel was serialised. It brought its creator instant success.

Continue on to Part 2 (>link)

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