J. P. Donleavy James Patrick Donleavy (23 April 1926 - 11 September 2017) was an Irish American novelist and playwright. His first novel was The Ginger Man. Another novel, A Fairy Tale of New York, provided the title of the famous song "Fairytale of New York". Born in New York City to Irish emigrant parents, he served in the US Navy during World War II. After the war ended he moved to Ireland. In 1946 he began studying at Trinity College, Dublin, but left before taking a degree. He was first published in the Dublin literary periodical, Envoy. He gained critical acclaim with his first novel, The Ginger Man, which is one of the Modern Library 100 best novels. The novel was banned in Ireland and the United States of America 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". Donleavy lives at Levington Park, a country house on 200 acres (0.81 km2) directly on Lough Owel, near Mullingar, County Westmeath. He received his education at various schools in the USA and at Trinity College, Dublin (1946–49). Donleavy declared himself an atheist at the age of 14. He married Valerie Heron in 1946; the couple had two children: Philip (born 1951) and Karen (born 1955). They divorced in 1969. He remarried in 1970 to Mary Wilson Price; that union ended in divorce in 1989. Source: Wikipedia.org
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Clayton Claw Cleaver Clementine of The Three Glands is a medical rarity. He sets off westwards to take up residence in the haunted edifice of Charnel Castle. Clementine, an unkonwn unsung product of the new world and rec ...Quick View
A Fairy Tale of New York is a funny, lusty, and sad novel of comic genius. Returning from study abroad, Cornelius Christian enters customs with his luggage and his dead wife. His first encounter in New York is with a fun ...Quick View
Once the squire of the mansion Andromeda Park and now a mere menial, Darcy Dancer embarks upon a series of adventures across the country and in bohemian Dublin in search of his lost youth. A hilariously comic, poignant n ...Quick View
In the years before and after World War II, Balthazar B is the world's last shy, elegant young man. Born to riches in Paris and raised by his governess, Balthazar is shipped off to a British boarding school, where he mee ...Quick View
Written in Donleavy's inimitable style this is a sequel to the "London Adventures of Schultz", about a rebarbative but quite irrepressible American impressario. ...Quick View
Feckless, unwashed, charming, penurious Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, Trinity College Law student, Irish American with an English Accent, maroon in the ould country and dreaming of dollars and ready women, stumbles from t ...Quick View
The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners
By: J. P. Donleavy
26 Nov 1976 - Penguin
First published in the mid-seventies, this is both of its time and timeless. A sardonic view of the English class system by a Dublin-educated American, it takes the tone of the self-help manuals beloved of the first half ...Quick View
J.P. Donleavy's Ireland: In All Her Sins and in Some of Her Graces
By: J. P. Donleavy
10 May 1986 - Viking Press
Follow a youthful J. P. Donleavy on a Trinity student odyssey through the Dublin of the 1940s and 1950s ...Quick View
J.P. Donleavy has been writing for 45 years. This is a collection of short pieces which transports the reader into his world. ...Quick View
The History of the Ginger Man: The Dramatic Story Behind a Contemporary Classic By the Man Who Wrote
By: J. P. Donleavy
Donleavy is a gifted storyteller, and this memoir is as vivid and entertaining as the The Ginger Man itself. Donleavy recounts the four years he spent writing this popular novel in Ireland and America, describing his rea ...Quick View
A Singular Country is J.P. Donleavy’s idiosyncratic and personal view of Ireland told in the vernacular of the Irishman, which he has nearly, but not quite, become. “A country where the dead are forever living and wh ...Quick View
the superlative game of eccentric champions : its history, accoutrements, rules, conduct, and regimental correctness. ...Quick View