Sterling Lord

Lord's success began with an unknown named Jack Kerouac and his hard-to-sell novel “On the Road.” Lord, who died on Saturday September 3 2022 in Ocala, Fla., at 102. For more than 60 years he was one of New York’s most successful and durable literary agents. After graduating with a degree in English from Grinnell College in Iowa, Mr. Lord was drafted into the Army and shipped to Europe near the end of World War II. When the fighting stopped, he helped edit the weekly magazine of the military publication Stars and Stripes; when the Army dropped that publication in 1948, he and a colleague briefly ran it privately. He worked on or edited several magazines, including True and Cosmopolitan. In 1987, Mr. Lord joined the agent Peter Matson to form Sterling Lord Literistic. Mr. Lord gradually yielded day-to-day management and eventually sold his stock. But he continued to work, and into his 90s.