James Cousins

Early life and education James Henry Sproull Cousins was born on 22 July 1873 in Belfast, Ireland to James Cousins, a mariner, and Susan Cousins . The Cousins family were Wesleyan Methodist and of Huguenot descent.

Cousins produced several books of poetry whilst in Ireland as well as acting in the first production of Cathleen Ní Houlihan (under the stage name of H. Sproule) with the famous Irish revolutionary and beauty Maud Gonne in the title role. His plays were produced in the first years of the twentieth century in the Abbey Theatre, the most famous being "the Racing Lug". After a dispute with W. B. Yeats, who objected to 'too much Cousins' the Irish National Theatre movement split with two-thirds of the actors and writers siding with Cousins against Yeats. He also wrote widely on the subject of Theosophy and in 1915 travelled to India with the voyage fees paid for by Annie Besant the President of the Theosophical Society. He spent most of the rest of his life in the sub-continent, apart from a year as Professor of English Literature at Keio University in Tokyo and another lecturing in New York. He formally converted to Hinduism in 1937. They were both strict vegetarians and in 1905 founded the Irish Vegetarian Society.

Works POEMS BY JAMES H. COUSINS The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. Ed. Nicholson & Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. Padraic Colum (1881–1972). Anthology of Irish Verse. 1922.