[2] He ran away from boarding school when he was quite young, and spent much of his youth working as a sundowner (itinerant labourer) and jackaroo.
[1] He spent time in Victoria and New South Wales, before heading back west to Kalgoorlie to join his father.
[1] Educating himself at the State Library of Western Australia in Perth, Harcourt moved into journalism by sending articles to newspapers.
[1] He published his second novel, Upsurge, in 1934,[2] which became the first Australian book to be officially banned under the guidelines of the Commonwealth Book Censorship Board (Norman Lindsay's Redheap had been banned under different legislation in 1930),[4] which had been established in 1933 by Prime Minister Joseph Lyon's United Australia Party (later renamed the Literature Censorship Board).
However the main cause of its ban was its socialist tone and subversive agenda which criticised capitalism,[9] featuring Communist characters in its portrayal of life in the relief camps of the Depression.