James Courage is one of those fine writers who, though he enjoyed considerable success in his lifetime, has now more or less slipped from view. None of the eight novels he published between 1933 and 1961 is in print and most of them are impossible to find secondhand. The same goes for a collection of his short stories published in 1973. He is chiefly remembered for A Way of Love, a bold novel about a homosexual relationship that was published in 1959 and became a minor cause célèbre in New Zealand when it was banned there.
Courage was born in New Zealand in 1903, but came to Oxford University in 1922. After graduation, he moved to London and would spend most of his life there, apart from a 17-month period of recuperation back in his home country after he had been treated for tuberculosis in the early 1930s. Although he had a troubled relationship with his parents, they provided financial support for him to pursue a literary career, which he supplemented by working in a Hampstead bookshop.
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