Leggett, John, 1917-....

John Leggett was born November 11, 1917, in New York, N.Y. to Bleecker Noel and Dorothy (Mahar) Leggett. Leggett attended Andover, received an A.B. from Yale University in 1942, and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1945. He married Mary Lee Fahnestock in 1948, with whom he had three children. They divorced in 1986, and Leggett married Edwina Bennington of San Francisco.

Leggett was an editor and publicity director for Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston from 1950 to 1960 and an editor at Harper & Row Publishing in New York from 1960 to 1967. In 1969 Leggett became a professor of English and the director of the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, serving in those capacities until 1987.

Leggett's published writings include Wilder Stone (1960), The Gloucester Branch (1964) , Who Took the Gold Away (1969), Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies (1974), and Gulliver House (1979).

Biographical information taken from John Leggett Papers, MsC 503, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa.

From the guide to the John Leggett writings, 1960-1969, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)