Dr Peter Kavanagh: Dr Peter Kavanagh, who has died aged 89, was a writer, academic and lifelong champion of the work of his brother, Patrick.
The "sacred keeper of his brother's sacred conscience", he provided practical support to help Patrick get his literary career off the ground and chronicled that career in two biographies, which he wrote "as a partisan, as his alter ego, almost as his evangelist".
However, he took his partisanship to extremes at times and he became involved in a lengthy legal wrangle over the copyright to Patrick's work. Later, he took exception to the burial of his brother's widow, Katherine, in her husband's grave.
The only member of the Kavanagh family to share Patrick's faith in his genius, he provided lodgings and financial support for him as he sought to make his way in the Dublin literary world. Aside from the practical support, he also suggested he had a key role his brother's work. Asked in a 2004 interview who his brother's greatest influence was, he replied "myself", before inviting the next question.
After he left Dublin to pursue an academic career in the United States, he continued to support Patrick. In the early 1950s he gave financial backing to Kavanagh's Weekly, "a journal of literature and politics". He contributed articles under the pseudonym John L. Flanagan and wrote unsigned articles on North America, while also writing the letters page.
However, some well-wishers, including Peadar O'Donnell, were concerned that under Peter's influence the journal became too bitter and abusive. It folded after 13 issues, leaving him out of pocket to the tune of £600 and prompting Dublin wits to remark: "It was robbing Peter to pay Patrick".
The brothers conducted a voluminous correspondence over the years and visited each other regularly. But Peter was kept in the dark about Patrick's seven-year relationship with Katherine Moloney and was, in fact, unaware of her existence; he was "startled" to hear of their marriage in 1967.
Following Patrick's death, also in 1967, he quit teaching to publish a series of books on his brother's life, including: Lapped Furrows (1969), correspondence between himself and Patrick; The Complete Poems of Patrick Kavanagh (1972); Sacred Keeper (1978), a biography; and Patrick Kavanagh: A Life Chronicle (2000), a second biography. He also edited Patrick's novel, By Night Unstarred (1977).
In the 1970s he became involved in a dispute with Katherine Kavanagh over copyright to Patrick's work and litigation continued for over a decade. In the meantime Katherine died and the trustees of her estate continued the action. The court eventually vested all rights in the trustees.
Born on March 19th, 1916, in Inniskeen, Co Monaghan, he was the youngest of the nine children of James Kavanagh, a cobbler and subsistence farmer, and his wife, Bridget (nee Quinn). Educated at Kednaminisha National School and the Patrician Brothers High School, Carrickmacross, he trained to be a teacher at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, and qualified in 1936.
He taught in Dundalk and Dublin, and studied at University College Dublin, completing a BA degree in 1940 and a master's in 1941. In 1944 he received a Ph.D from Trinity College Dublin and in 1946 emigrated to the US. There he began teaching literature at St Francis College, Brooklyn, moving to Loyola University, Chicago, in 1947. He later taught at Gannon College (now University) in Erie, Pennsylvania, and his last teaching post was at the University of Wisconsin, Menomonie.
He had earlier taken a break from academia to work in public relations for an engineering firm in London.
His first publication, The Irish Theatre (1947), detailed the origins and development of theatre in Ireland from the beginning of recorded history to the middle 20th century. The Story of the Abbey Theatre followed in 1950. In a review for the New York Times Seán O'Casey described it as "the best book written on the subject".
Shortly after his arrival in New York, Patrick appointed him as his unofficial North American agent. In 1958 he built his own printing press and began learning the rudiments of the trade. His aim was to publish his brother's poetry, which had been ignored by commercial printers, under the imprint of the Peter Kavanagh Hand Press.
In 1986 he sold his brother's papers, as well as material of his own relating to the late poet, to UCD for $100,000.
In 1989 he removed the cross over Patrick's grave in Inniskeen, in protest at the opening of the grave for burial of the poet's widow, Katherine, which he described as an act of desecration. In 1998 the cross was again placed over the grave after a memorial monument that had been erected in its place was destroyed. He was staying in the area at the time and denied having anything to do with the removal of the headstone.
His wife Ann (nee Keely) and their daughters, Keelin and Caomh, survive him.
Peter Kavanagh: born March 19th, 1916; died January 27th, 2006