Louis Marie Anne Couperus (10 June 1863 – 16 July 1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet. His oeuvre contains a wide variety of genres: lyric poetry, psychological and historical novels, novellas, short stories, fairy tales, feuilletons and sketches. Couperus is considered to be one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature. In 1923, he was awarded the Tollensprijs (Tollens Prize).

Couperus and his wife travelled extensively in Europe and Asia, and he later wrote several related travelogues which were published weekly.

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was born on 10 June 1863 at Mauritskade 11 in The Hague, Netherlands, into a long-established, Indo family of the colonial landed gentry of the Dutch East Indies. He was the eleventh and youngest child of John Ricus Couperus (1816–1902), a prominent colonial administrator, lawyer and landheer or lord of the private domain (particuliere land) of Tjikopo in Java, and Catharina Geertruida Reynst (1829–1893). Through his father, he was a great-grandson of Abraham Couperus (1752–1813), Governor of Malacca, and Willem Jacob Cranssen (1762–1821), Governor of Ambon with a female-line, Eurasian lineage that goes back even earlier to the mid-eighteenth century.

Four of the ten siblings had died before Louis was born. Couperus was baptized on 19 July 1863 in the Eglise wallonne in The Hague. When Louis reached the age of five, his youngest sister, Trudy, was twelve years old and his youngest brother, Frans, eleven. In The Hague he followed lessons at the boarding school of Mr. Wyers, where he first met his later friend Henri van Booven. On 6 November 1872 the Couperus family left home, travelled by train to Den Helder and embarked on the steamboat Prins Hendrik, which would bring them back to the Dutch East Indies. They arrived on 31 December 1872 in Batavia, where they spent the night at the then famous Hotel des Indes. The family settled in a house in Batavia, located on the Koningsplein and the mother of Couperus and his brother Frans (who was suffering from peritonitis) returned to the Netherlands in December 1873; his mother returned to the Dutch East Indies in April 1874. So Couperus spent part of his youth (1873–1878) in the Dutch East Indies, going to school in Batavia.

Here he met his cousin, Elisabeth Couperus-Baud, for the first time. In his novel De zwaluwen neergestreken (The swallows flew down), he wrote about his youth:

In the Dutch East Indies, Couperus also met his future brother-in-law for the first time, Gerard de la Valette (a writer and official at the Dutch Indian Government who would marry his sister Trudy), who wrote in 1913 about his relationship with Couperus:

After he finished primary school, Couperus attended the Gymnasium Willem III in Batavia. In the summer of 1878 Couperus and his family returned to the Netherlands, where they went to live in a house at the Nassaukade (plein) 4. In The Hague Couperus was sent to the H.B.S. school; during this period of his life, he spent a lot of time at the Vlielander-Hein family (his sister was married to Benjamin Marius Vlielander Hein); later their son, François Emile Vlielander Hein (1882–1919), was his favourite nephew, who helped him with his literary work. At the HBS Couperus met his later friend Frans Netscher; during this period of his life, he read the novels written by Émile Zola and Ouida (the latter he would meet in Florence, years later). When Couperus' school results did not improve, his father send him to a school where he was trained to be a teacher in the Dutch language. In 1883 he attended the opera written by Charles Gounod Le tribut de Zamora; he later used elements of this opera in his novel Eline Vere.

In 1885 plans were made to compose an operetta for children. Virginie la Chapelle wrote the music, and Couperus provided the lyrics for De schoone slaapster in het bosch ("Sleeping beauty in the forest"). The opera was staged by a hundred children at the Koninklijke Schouwburg (Royal Theatre) in The Hague. In January 1885 Couperus had already written one of his early poems, called Kleopatra. Other writings from this period include the sonnet Een portret ("A Portrait") and Uw glimlach of uw bloemen ("Your smile or your flowers"). In 1882, Couperus started reading Petrarch and had the intention to write a novel about him, which was never realized, although he did publish the novella In het huis bij den dom ("In the house near the church"), loosely inspired by Plutarch. When Couperus just had finished his novella Een middag bij Vespaziano ("An Afternoon at Vespaziano"), he visited Johannes Bosboom and his wife Anna Louisa Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint, whose works Couperus greatly admired. Couperus let Mrs. Bosboom-Toussaint read his novella, which she found very good. In 1883 Couperus started writing Laura; this novella was published in parts in De Gids (a Dutch literary magazine) in 1883 and 1884. In 1885 Couperus' debut in book form, Een lent van vaerzen ("A ribbon of poems") was published (by publisher J.L. Beijers with a book cover designed by painter Ludwig Willem Reymert Wenckebach). In these days a person Couperus greatly admired for his sense of beauty and intelligence was writer Carel Vosmaer, whom he frequently met while walking in the center of The Hague.