[4] Upon his graduation with a degree in drama in 1942, he served as a United States Navy lieutenant in the Pacific Theater.
After the end of World War II, Leggett collected "a fat swatch of rejection slips" until in 1950 he was offered a job at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, where he worked for 10 years as an editor and publicity director,[3] then for seven years as editor at Harper and Rowe in New York.
Boyle, Ethan Canin, Michael Cunningham, Gail Godwin, Denis Johnson, and Jane Smiley came to the workshop as students.
[5] Writers he attracted as faculty include Stanley Elkin, John Cheever, Ian McEwan, Raymond Carver, Jorie Graham, Frederick Exley, Gail Godwin, Barry Hannah, James Alan McPherson, John Irving, and Frank Conroy, who became his successor.
[8][9] Leggett moved to Napa, California in 1987 and later married Edwina Bennington of San Francisco, with whom he lived until his death.