A decade ago, four long-term clients were invited to lunch at the Regency Hotel. It is safe to say that no other literary agent has ever assembled such a group.
The sports writer Frank Deford and the investigative reporter David Wise had been represented by Mr. Lord for more than 60 years. Nicholas Pileggi has been a client for 50 years. There was a baby in the group. Mr. Lord had been his lawyer for 44 years. It was for more than two centuries of representation.
Mr. Pileggi said it was an amazing moment when Mr. Lord came up with the idea for the film. We were all at an advanced age and he was still helping us.
It was standard for Mr. Lord to be steadfast. He was one of New York's most successful and durable literary agents for more than 60 years.
Mr. Lord worked on the 1969 study of the marketing of Richard M. Nixon, for which Joe McGinniss was the author. He was the last link to what we can now see not so much as a Golden Age, but as a brief, shining moment when long-form journalism mattered.
Mr. Lord will be remembered most for his association with Jack Kerouac and his book "On the Road."
Mr. Lord said that Kerouac walked timidly into his office on East 36th Street. Mr. Lord was two years older than Kerouac at the time, but they had little in common. Kerouac was a rough-hewed, hard- drinking New Englander.
Mr. Lord said that Kerouac gave him a manuscript that was wrapped in a newspaper. The book took four years to sell. Five million copies of "On the Road" have been sold and burned as many gallons of gas as generations of young people have set out in search of the America Kerouac saw.
Mr. Lord's tennis skills, as well as being ranked as a teenager and taking the French national champion to five sets, proved to be a great asset to a small-town Iowan. He got a boost from the fact that snootier agents may have thrown their sports sections. Some of Mr. Lord's biggest books were written in the sports world.
His name was perfect. A friend once asked, "what was your name before you changed it?" The translator made the author's dedication to the Supreme God obvious when the book came out in Portuguese.
On Sept. 3, 1920, sterling lord was born in Burlington, Iowa. He was nourished in his love of books by his father who was an amateur bookbinder. Mr. Lord's only book was on tennis, and it was his passion that made him sit up and take notice. His tennis serve was said to be just as hard to hit as a knuckle ball. He published a memoir, "Lord of Publishing", in the summer of 2013).
During World War II, Mr. Lord was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe. After the fighting ended, he helped edit the weekly magazine of the military publication Stars and Stripes, which he and a colleague briefly ran outside of Germany and Paris. He lived in New York after the magazine closed.
He worked on or edited several magazines over the course of a few years. The experiences convinced him that literary agents didn't serve magazine writers well and that they didn't spot changes in the market. Americans were suddenly more mobile, less provincial and less interested in escapist fiction than they were in understanding the world around them.
Jimmy Piersall's memoir of baseball and mental illness was ghostwritten by Al Hirshberg, one of the first clients. The silent Marx brother wrote "Harpo Speaks!" with the help of another person.
Mr. Lord was able to get Random House to sell the books toHarperCollins. He got the paperback rights to Judge John J. Sirica's memoir for half a million dollars.
He bragged that he rarely scoured for clients, and only stole them when others were unwilling to do so. His phone number was listed on his letterhead. Stuart Krichevsky was an agent who worked with Mr. Lord for 16 years.
Mr. Lord and the agent Peter Matson formed the company. Mr.Lord eventually sold his stock. He was still the highest-earning agent in the office into his 90's.
He felt that some of his colleagues were trying to undermine him in his last years with the agency. Mr. set up a new literary agency on his own, despite the fact that he had stopped playing tennis due to the eye disease. Philippa was the president of the group.
Mr. Lord had four marriages and two divorces. His daughter, Rebecca Lord, is still alive.
Mr. Lord said that Kerouac came to him at Robert Giroux's suggestion. Mr. Giroux didn't reject "On the Road" in the way Kerouac had written it, but he wouldn't accept it on a 120-foot scroll of paper.
The book was fresh and different. He took so long to sell it that Kerouac asked him to stop. Mr. Lord didn't pay much attention to him.
Stanley L. Colbert claimed that things went down differently. Mr. Colbert said in a 1983 article that Mr. Giroux had sent Kerouac and that he had first seen him. He said there was a dog-eared manuscript tied together by thick clothesline tied furiously at the top.
He said that Mr. Lord berated him for wasting his time on homeless people. Mr. Lord was told by Mr. Colbert to take the business and his attitude and shove it.
There is no dispute that Kerouac was still with Mr. Lord. Kerouac came to the guest quarters of the home he shared with his mother in Florida to be with him.
Mr. Lord could not stop Kerouac from falling into alcoholism and drugs. He wrote that he was only Jack's literary agent.
Mr. Lord wore a blue shirt with a white collar and a dark necktie when he attended Kerouac's funeral.
The original manuscript of Kerouac's "On the Road" was never kept by Mr. Lord. He said in an interview that he was thinking of helping Jack when he died. An autograph copy of "On the Road" would have been worth $20,000 at the time, he said. He said that he couldn't have sold it.
Mr. Lord said that he was in a business that was captivating. I am able to live forever.
Jack Kadden reported.
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