Having completed his Senior Cambridge Examination (under the Indian Council for Secondary Education) with the study of Shakespeare, Shaw and Nikolai Gogol – and Virgil – Stanley Coutinho went on to obtain an Honours degree in Commerce, in the University of Bombay (now Mumbai University) where his romance with literature continued with Thomas Hardy, William Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, and Alan Paton. Then with a degree in Law followed by a degree in Business Management, coupled with clearing the UPSC Examination, he went on to the mundane tasks of managing industrial units in various parts of the country.

During this period, he undertook the review of books for Business India and the Free Press Journal (Mumbai), and Herald (Goa) the subjects covered both fiction and non-fiction – management, self-help, history, and politics. The reviews added to his knowledge of the various subjects covered, but, more important, they honed his writing skills while exposing him to modern writing in English, in India, and overseas