His father was chemist Joseph Septimus Cobb, an English immigrant from Sheffield who owned a pharmacy below their apartment.
[1][2] He was educated at Sydney Grammar School, but left early to start a cadetship at The Daily Telegraph, later becoming a reporter.
[1][3] In 1921, shortly after coming into a small inheritance from his mother's death, Cobb left for Oxfordshire, England and became a poultry farmer.
Cobb married Barbara Anne Convy, who was twenty years older than him, on 31 March 1924 at Little Rollright.
Both novels concern the "spiritual odyssey" of their main characters, which came from an interest in religion which led Cobb to question orthodox Christianity when he was young and then, in England, embrace theosophy.