John Leggett was born November 11, 1917, in New York, NY. He was the son of Bleecker Noel and Dorothy (Mahar) Leggett. Leggett attended Andover, received an A.B. at Yale University in 1942, and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 -- 1945, becoming a lieutenant. 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, Boston, Massachusetts from 1950 -- 1960 and an editor at Harper & Row Publishing in New York from 1960 -- 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, The Gloucester Branch, Who Took the Gold Away, Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies, and Gulliver House. His most recent book is A Daring Young Man: A Biography of William Saroyan (New York: Knopf, 2002), and his research files and drafts for it constitute the 2003 Addendum.