Patrick O’Connor, former editor-in-chief at Washington Square Press, Pinnacle Books, Popular Library, and Curtis Books, and former senior editor at New American Library and Warner Books, died from complications of pneumonia on Saturday, October 13, 2012 in Houston, Texas. He was 87.
His authors included Ayn Rand and (Father) Andrew M. Greeley, with whom he worked on up until his death. He was also the first person to publish poet and dance critic Edwin Denby in book form and published a series of first-and-only novels by the likes of Lincoln Kirstein of the New York City Ballet and Janet Flanner (nom de plume “Genêt”) of The New Yorker. He persuaded his bosses to publish E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books with a fib: that the BBC was filming the series. The BBC called him on it, but the books were published and eventually did become a British TV series a decade later. O'Connor was also a poet; his volume of poetry, No Poem for Fritz, was published in 1978.
