PW: Geoghegan Passes

John Geoghegan, former chairman of Coward, McCann & Geoghegan and an early critic of the corporatization of book publishing, died of complications from a brain aneurysm at hospital in California December 28. He was 82.

Geoghegan began his publishing career at J.B. Lippincott in 1945. From 1948 to 1958 he worked for Doubleday and joined Coward-McCann in 1959, as a v-p in the trade department rising to editor-in-chief, president and chairman in short order. In 1970 the firm added Geoghegan to its name. After 37 years with the publisher, Geoghegan resigned in 1980, after issuing a blunt attack on "the corporate business school mentality," of CMG's parent company Putnam, which had been acquired by the MCA entertainment conglomerate in 1975.

A distinguished editor as well, Geoghegan acquired John le Carre's first novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and published such authors as Thornton Wilder, Jack Kerouac, William Golding and Muriel Spark.