James Francis Courage (9 February 1903–5 October 1963) was a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer, poet and bookseller. He was born in Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand on 9 February 1903. He moved to England as a young man, dying in Hampstead. Courage told his diary: "Why do I go on writing? One reason is that I believe I’ve written about people in Canterbury as it has never been done before – just as Turgenev wrote about certain people in Russian provincial society as it had not been done before."