The Ginger Man
The first edition of The Ginger Man, 1955
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| Author | J. P. Donleavy |
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| Country | France |
| Published | 1955 |
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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 obscenity.
The terra incognita of sexual encounters in late 1940s Dublin is mapped in the often racy misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a student of law at Trinity College, who lives in Dublin with his English wife and infant daughter. Dangerfield, an American Protestant of Irish descent, is commonly believed to be a fictional version of the author, or perhaps more broadly, a composite of Donleavy and his contemporaries at Trinity.
The Ginger Man was part of the rush of fictionalized works immediately following the Second World War, an era which includes seminal works by John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
The Ginger Man was named one of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century by the Modern Library in 1998. It has sold 45 million copies world-wide and never been out of print. The book was reprinted in 2001, and republished on 29 July 2010 by Grove Press.
Donleavy wrote a stage adaptation of The Ginger Man which opened in London in September 1959, with Richard Harris playing Dangerfield. In October, the play opened in Dublin, also starring Harris, and was closed after three performances, due to the play's offensiveness according to the Dublin critics, and following protests from the Catholic Church. All this is recorded by Donleavy in the 1961 Random House publication of the play with an essay by Donleavy, "What They Did in Dublin with The Ginger Man (a play)".
The BBC produced a 90-minute made-for-television version of the play, directed by Peter Dews, and aired on 23 March 1962 in the United Kingdom. Ann Bell played "Marion Dangerfield", Ronald Fraser as "Kenneth O'Keefe", Ian Hendry as "Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield", and Margaret Tyzack was "Miss Frost".
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