John Geoghegan; Publisher Discovered John le Carre

John J. “Jack” Geoghegan, 82, book publisher who acquired John le Carre’s landmark “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” The 1963 novel from an unknown and pseudonymous British author (Le Carre’s real name is David Cornwell) was offered to Geoghegan by a London literary agent as “an interesting thriller.” Geoghegan had just assumed the presidency, and then the chairmanship, of the New York publishing company Coward-McCann and was looking for something well-written that would sell. Le Carre later praised Geoghegan for recognizing that the book, a realistic view of spies without the James Bond glamour, could become a bestseller. It was made into a 1965 motion picture starring Richard Burton as the aging spy. Le Carre’s career blossomed, and Geoghegan assured his company’s financial success. Another of the books he had the foresight to publish was Edmund Morris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 biography “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.” Morris, recently pilloried for his partly fictional biography of Ronald Reagan, once noted that Geoghegan’s “generosity saved a starving writer from a Salvation Army hospital.” Morris also wrote Geoghegan a note thanking him for his patience in waiting for the manuscript, dating the letter 1884 and forging the signature of Theodore Roosevelt. Geoghegan shook the publishing world in 1981 when he abruptly resigned from what was then Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in protest of “finance and administration guys telling editors what kind of products and what kind of marketing will be done.” Born in Philadelphia, Geoghegan served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, was a book salesman for 14 years, then joined Coward-McCann as editor in chief in 1959. On Tuesday in Walnut Creek, Calif., of complications from a brain aneurysm.