Gareth and Janet Dunleavy

Gareth Dunleavy was born in Willimantic, Connecticut and raised in nearby Putnam. Gareth's mother taught him "to read, read, read" and his father made him "read aloud every historical roadside marker in New England." He attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts prior to joining the U.S. Army during World War II. Gareth served in the 45th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop. Wounded at Anzio, Italy, on February 20, 1944, Gareth spent five months in military hospitals before returning to his studies at Clark. After completing his studies at Clark, he received an M.A. from Brown and a Ph.D. from Northwestern. Gareth then became an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There, he rose through the ranks and later served as department chair and Associate Dean of the Graduate School. He is a Phi Beta Kappa Fellow.

Janet Egleson Dunleavy was an honor student at Hunter College in New York City. She later earned an M.A. and Ph.D. at New York University and postdoctoral appointments in Dublin and Tel Aviv. Janet went on to become a gifted scholar and professor of English at SUNY Stony Brook. In addition to numerous awards, grants, and academic publications, she also wrote three children's books.

In 1970, Gareth's and Janet's paths crossed at a conference. According to Gareth, from that day forward Janet "joined forces with me to make the writing life, the teaching life and the family life fuse in miraculous fashion." Among their many joint accomplishments was the receipt of joint Guggenheim fellowships which resulted in the critically acclaimed biography of the first President of Ireland: Douglas Hyde: A Maker of Modern Ireland (University of California Press, 1991).

Gareth and Janet retired to Newburyport, Massachusetts and, with the onset of Janet's Parkinson's disease, to RiverWoods in Exeter, New Hampshire. Janet died in December 2000; the donation of this collection to UNH is in recognition of the thirty years that she and Gareth shared their love for rare books, for good literature, and for each other.

We are grateful to both of them.

UNH Library | Milne Special Collections Department