James Patrick Donleavy (23 April 1926 – 11 September 2017) was an American-Irish novelist, short story writer and playwright. His best-known work is the novel ''

The Ginger Man ''The Ginger Man'' is a novel, first published in Paris in 1955, by J. P. Donleavy. The story is set in Dublin, Ireland, in post-war 1947. Upon its publication, it was banned both in Ireland and the United States of America by reason of obsce ...

'', which was initially banned for obscenity.

Early life

Donleavy was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, to Irish immigrants Margaret and Patrick Donleavy, and grew up in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...

. His father was a

firefighter A firefighter is a first responder and rescuer extensively trained in firefighting, primarily to extinguish hazardous fires that threaten life, property, and the environment as well as to rescue people and in some cases or jurisdictions als ...

, and his mother came from a wealthy background. He had a sister, Mary Rita, and a younger brother. He received his education at various schools in the United States, then served in the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. After the war ended, he moved to Ireland. In 1946 he began studying

bacteriology Bacteriology is the branch and specialty of biology that studies the morphology, ecology, genetics and biochemistry of bacteria as well as many other aspects related to them. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classificat ...

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

, but left in 1949 before taking a degree.

Career

Donleavy's first published work was a short story entitled ''A Party on Saturday Afternoon'', which appeared in the Dublin literary periodical ''

Envoy Envoy or Envoys may refer to: Diplomacy * Diplomacy, in general * Envoy (title) * Special envoy, a type of diplomatic rank Brands *Airspeed Envoy, a 1930s British light transport aircraft *Envoy (automobile), an automobile brand used to sell Br ...

'' in 1950. He gained critical acclaim with his first novel, ''

'' (1955), which is one of the

Modern Library The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an ...

100 best novels. The novel, of which Donleavy's friend and fellow writer

Brendan Behan Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) ( ; ga, Breandán Ó Beacháin; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican activist who wrote in both English and ...

was the first person to read the completed manuscript, was banned in Ireland and the United States by reason of obscenity. Lead character Sebastian Dangerfield was in part based on Trinity College companion Gainor Crist, an American Navy veteran also studying at Trinity College on the G.I. Bill, whom Donleavy once described in an interview as a "saint", though of a Rabelaisian kind. Correctly or incorrectly, his initial works are sometimes grouped with the kitchen sink artists as well as the "

Angry Young Men The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working- and middle-class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis; other popular figures included Jo ...

". Another novel, '' A Fairy Tale of New York'', provided the title of the song "

Fairytale of New York "Fairytale of New York" is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band the Pogues, featuring singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals. The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a du ...

". In March 2007, Donleavy was the castaway on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

's ''

Desert Island Discs ''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a "castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usua ...

''. In 2015, Donleavy was the recipient of the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Energy

Irish Book Awards The Irish Book Awards are Irish literary awards given annually to books and authors in various categories. In 2018 An Post took over sponsorship of the awards from Bord Gais Energy. It is the only literary award supported by all-Irish bookstores. ...

. In 2016,

awarded him with an honorary doctorate.

Personal life

Donleavy declared himself to be an atheist at the age of 14. In 1946, he married Valerie Heron; the couple had two children: Philip (born 1951) and Karen (born 1955). They divorced in 1969 and he remarried in 1970 to Mary Wilson Price; that union ended in divorce in 1989. In 2011, it was reported that Donleavy had not fathered his two children with Price. A DNA test in the early 1990s had confirmed that Rebecca was the daughter of brewing scion Kieran Guinness, and Rory was the son of Kieran's older brother Finn, whom Price married after her divorce from Donleavy. "My interest is only to look after the welfare of the child," Donleavy told ''The Times'', "and after a certain stage, you can't worry about their parentage". He lived at Levington Park, a country house on directly on

Lough Owel Lough Owel () is a mesotrophic lough in the Midlands of Ireland, situated north of Mullingar, the county town of Westmeath. It has a maximum depth of . Water from Lough Owel feeds the Royal Canal, a canal crossing Ireland from Dublin to the Ri ...

, near

Mullingar Mullingar ( ; ) is the county town of County Westmeath in Ireland. It is the third most populous town in the Midland Region, with a population of 20,928 in the 2016 census. The Counties of Meath and Westmeath Act 1543 proclaimed Westmeath ...

County Westmeath "Noble above nobility" , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Westmeath.svg , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Ireland , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = , subdivis ...

, from 1972. Throughout much of his life, he was known as Mike by close friends, though the origins of this nickname are unclear. Donleavy died on 11 September 2017, aged 91.

List of works

* ''

'' (novel) Olympia Press, Paris 1955 * ''What They Did in Dublin, with The Ginger Man'' (a play) MacGibbon & Kee, London 1961 * ''The Ginger Man'' (play) Random House, New York 1961 * ''Fairy Tales of New York'' (play), Penguin, UK 1961 Random House, New York 1961 * '' A Singular Man'' Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston 1963 * ''Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule'' (stories/sketches) Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston 1964 * ''A Singular Man'' (play) The Bodley Head, UK 1965 * ''The Saddest Summer of Samuel S'' (novella) Delacorte Press, New York 1966 * '' The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B'' (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1968 * ''The Onion Eaters'' (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1971 * ''The Plays of JP Donleavy'' Delacorte Press, New York 1972 * '' A Fairy Tale of New York'' (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1973 * ''J.P. Donleavy: The Plays'' Penguin, UK 1974 * '' The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners'' (non-fiction) Delacorte Press, New York 1975 * (novel) Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania 1977 * ''Schultz'' (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1979 * (novel) Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania 1983 * ''De Alfonce Tennis...'' (novel) Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1984 * ''J. P. Donleavy's Ireland...'' (non-fiction) Viking, New York, 1986 (Michael Joseph, London 1986) *
Are You Listening Rabbi Löw
' (novel), Viking, London 1987 * ''A Singular Country'' (nonfiction) Ryan, Peterborough, UK 1989 * ''That Darcy, That Dancer, That Gentleman'' (novel) Viking, London 1990 * ''The History of the Ginger Man'' (nonfiction) Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1994, Viking, London 1994 * (novella) Thornwillow Press, US 1995 * ''An Author and His Image'' (collected short pieces – nonfiction) Viking, London 1997 * ''Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton'' (novel) Thomas Dunn-St. Martins Press, New York (Viking, London) 1998 *
A Letter Marked Personal
' (novel) The Lilliput Press, Arbour Hill, Dublin 2019

References

External links

* ttp://www.jpdonleavy-compendium.org JPDonleavy-Compendium.org* * *
"''The Ginger Man'' in Dublin", ''Totally Gonzo'', 17 June 2008
*[http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=starts&locID=chan86036&srchtp=name&ca=2&c=1&AI=U13671893&NA=donleavy&ste=12&tbst=prp&tab=1&docNum=H1000026247&bConts=59 "J.P. Donleavy", ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Gale, 2010.]
"A singular man: J P Donleavy on his fascinating life since The Ginger Man"
John McEntee, ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'', 5 August 2010
J.P. Donleavy interviewed by Stephen Banker, circa 1978
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Donleavy, J. P. 1926 births 2017 deaths Alumni of Trinity College Dublin 20th-century American novelists American atheists American people of Irish descent American emigrants to Ireland Irish atheists Irish dramatists and playwrights Irish novelists Irish male writers People from County Westmeath Writers from New York City Postmodern writers 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights American male novelists American male dramatists and playwrights United States Navy personnel of World War II 20th-century American male writers Novelists from New York (state)