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Louis Marie-Anne Couperus (June 10, 1863 – July 16, 1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet of the late 19th and early 20th century. He is usually considered one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature.
Born in The Hague in 1863, Couperus grew up in a wealthy patrician family, spending part of his youth in the Dutch East Indies and going to school in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia). After returning to The Hague in 1878, he published some early volumes of poetry which garnered little success or critical attention. Couperus came to fame with the publication of his first novel Eline Vere (1888), a naturalist work influenced by French novelists like Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert. Couperus' 1891 novel Noodlot ('Footsteps of Fate') was much admired by Oscar Wilde, and many have noted stylistic similarities between Noodlot and Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Couperus' later works include De Stille Kracht ('The Hidden Force', 1900) and De Berg van Licht ('The Mountain of Light', 1906), a decadent novel set at the height of the Roman Empire. His psychological novels, such as De Boeken der Kleine Zielen (1901-1902; translated as 'The Books of the Small Souls') en Van Oude Menschen, de Dingen, die Voorbij gaan... (1906: translated as 'Of old people and the Things that Pass') enjoyed much success in the English speaking countries after the First World War. |