John Turner Sargent Sr.
John Turner Sargent Sr. (June 26, 1924 – February 5, 2012) was the president and chief executive of Doubleday and Company from 1963 to 1978. He took over from Douglas Black and grew the company from a small, family-influenced business into a large, diversified publishing group with interests in broadcasting and baseball.
He was likely born on Long Island, raised in Cedarhurst, and came from a notable family. His grandfather, Charles Sprague Sargent, led Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. His father, Charles S. Sargent, did well in finance. John attended St. Mark’s School, spent a year at Harvard, and served in the Navy during World War II.
In 1953 he married Neltje Doubleday, granddaughter of the founder of the Doubleday publishing company. They had two children, Ellen and John Turner Sargent Jr. The couple divorced in 1965. Neltje later moved to Wyoming, remarried, ran a ranch and the Sheridan Inn, and became an abstract painter. In 1985, Sargent married Elizabeth Nichols Kelly, a magazine editor, who brought two children into the family.
Sargent joined Doubleday after the War as a copywriter and climbed the ranks. As leader, he expanded publishing beyond books to other media. He edited poetry by Theodore Roethke and published bestsellers by writers like Stephen King; he even recruited Jackie Kennedy Onassis as an editor in the 1970s.
Under his leadership, Doubleday expanded a lot. By 1979, the company published about 700 books a year and had bought the Dell Publishing Company, ran several book clubs including the Literary Guild, owned many bookshops, and operated printing and binding plants. The company also moved into radio, television, and film production.
Sargent became chairman in 1978 and held that role until 1985. With Nelson Doubleday Jr., he helped the company buy the New York Mets. When Doubleday was sold to Bertelsmann in 1986, he became chairman of the executive committee.
He was active in New York’s cultural scene, serving as a trustee of the New York Public Library, the New York Zoological Society, and the American Academy in Rome. He was known as a social figure who hosted a well-known Christmas Eve party for single people.
Sargent died in 2012 at age 87 after a stroke. He left behind his wife Elizabeth, his children and grandchildren, and two stepchildren.
In 2005, the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize was created in his honor at the Center for Fiction in New York. It has since become the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, funded by Nancy Dunnan and named for her father, Ray Flaherty.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:02 (CET).