James Henry Cousins

This work on J.H. Cousins, the Irish Poet, Critic and Theosophist, is the first fullscale bio-critical study of the author. No work has yet been published on this writer in India and abroad. Entirely based on primary materials available in the Theosophical Society Library & Archives, Adyar, Madras, where Cousins worked in various capacities since 1915, it throus new light on this rather forgotten literary figure who identified himself with the emergent nationalist milieu of the twenties and thirties of our country. This work aims at making an in-depth study of all the interesting corpus of Cousins’ works including those which are published as magazine articles in various Indian Journals and it provides for the first time a comprehensive and complete annotated Bibliography of this writer. One important dimension of this work it its exploration of Cousins and his contemporary Irish writers’ interest in Indian mystical thought and the impact of Theosophical Movement on their writings. This work studies Cousins’ involvement in India’s social, religious, literary and cultural fields and his interaction with eminent Indian writers and artists such as Aurobindo, Tagore, Sorojini Naidu, O.C. Ganguly and others. Among its positive findings, this work is the first to point out that the initial context for some of Aurobindo’s literary essays, especially what came to be known as The Future Poetry, was provided by Cousins. This work on the whole seeks to confirm Cousins’ life and work as a concrete embodiment of Irish-Indian understanding and their independence in efforts to create a new world of values based on spirituality and nationalism.