Alfred A. Knopf (person)
Encyclopedia
Alfred Abraham Knopf, Sr. (September 12, 1892 – August 11, 1984) was a leading American publisher of the 20th century, and founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf
and Donald Klopfer, and (of the previous generation) Frank Nelson Doubleday
, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt. Knopf paid special attention to the quality of printing, binding, and design in his books, and earned a reputation as a purist in both content and presentation.
Asked how to say his name, Knopf told the Literary Digest
: "Sound the k: k'nupf."
, who worked for Alfred briefly, then became a film director
and producer
. Alfred attended Columbia University
, where he was a pre-law student and a member of the Peithologian Society
, a debating and literary club. He began to show an interest in publishing during his senior year, becoming advertising manager of an undergraduate magazine. His interest in publishing was allegedly fostered by a correspondence with British author John Galsworthy
. After visiting Galsworthy in England
, Knopf gave up his plans for a law career, and upon his return went into publishing.
After receiving his B.A.
in 1912, Knopf worked as a clerk at Doubleday (1912–1913), then as an editorial assistant to Michael Kennerly (1914). He founded his own publishing house in 1915. The company initially emphasized European, especially Russian, literature, hence the choice of the borzoi
as a colophon
. At that time European literature was largely neglected by American publishers; Knopf published authors such as Simone de Beauvoir
, Albert Camus
, Joseph Conrad
, E. M. Forster
, Sigmund Freud
, André Gide
, Franz Kafka
, D. H. Lawrence
, Thomas Mann
, W. Somerset Maugham
and Jean-Paul Sartre
.
Knopf also published many American authors, including Conrad Aiken
, James Baldwin
, James M. Cain
, Theodore Dreiser
, Shirley Ann Grau
, Dashiell Hammett
, Langston Hughes
, Vachel Lindsay
, H.L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan
, John Updike
, and Knopf's own favorite, Willa Cather
. From 1924 to 1934, he published the famous literary magazine founded by Mencken and Nathan, The American Mercury
. He often developed a personal friendship with his authors. Knopf's personal interest in the fields of history
, sociology
, and science
led to close friendships in the academic community with such noted historians as Richard Hofstadter
, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
, and Samuel Eliot Morison
. A prominent Republican
until Watergate
, Knopf often drew legislators into lengthy correspondence by mail.
Knopf himself was also an author. His writings include Some Random Recollections, Publishing Then and Now, Portrait of a Publisher, Blanche W. Knopf: July 30, 1894-June 4, 1966, and Sixty Photographs.
When Knopf's son, Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.
, left the company in 1959 to found Atheneum Publishers, Alfred and Blanche became concerned about the eventual fate of their publishing house, which had always been a family business. The problem was solved in 1960, when Knopf merged with Random House
, which was owned by the Knopf's close friends Bennett Cerf
and Donald Klopfer. Knopf retained complete editorial control for five years, and then gave up only his right to veto other editors' manuscript selections. The editorial departments of the two companies remain separate, and Knopf, Inc., retains its distinctive character. Knopf called the merger "a perfect marriage."
Random House itself eventually became a division of Bertelsmann AG, a large multinational media company. The Knopf imprint remains in existence.
Blanche Knopf
died in June 1966. Alfred remarried in April of the following year, to Helen Norcross Hedrick. He died of congestive heart failure
on August 11, 1984, at his estate in Purchase, New York
.
Knopf was generally unimpressed with current literature
, though he admired John Hersey
, John Updike
, Jorge Amado
, and a few other contemporary authors. In Publishing Then and Now he wrote: "Frequently... our American author, whatever his age, experience in life, and technical knowledge, simply can't write. I don't mean that he is not the master of a prose style of elegance and distinction; I mean that he can't write simple straightforward and correct English. And here, only an exceptional editor will really help him." American authors are not very durable, he said in 1964, and "there are no giants in Europe now." And though twelve Knopf authors had won Nobel Prize
s, Knopf acknowledged that "some Nobel Prize books aren't very good," calling Doctor Zhivago
, for example, "incredibly tedious... If Krushchev
had banned it for dullness instead of its political implications, he might have been in the clear."
Knopf also lamented the "shockingly bad taste" that he felt characterizes much modern fiction, and warned of the danger of a "legal backlash" against pornography, a possible revival of censorship
.
This outspoken aspect of his character sometimes found voice in letters of complaint to hotels, restaurants, and stores that failed to meet his high standards. These letters grew increasingly frequent and more severe as he aged. One striking example is the six-year-long war of words he waged against the Eastman Kodak Company over a roll of lost film http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/aakser2.html.
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf
Bennett Cerf
Bennett Alfred Cerf was a publisher and co-founder of Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?.-Biography:Bennett Cerf...
and Donald Klopfer, and (of the previous generation) Frank Nelson Doubleday
Frank Nelson Doubleday
Frank Nelson Doubleday , known to friends and family as “Effendi”, was a famous U.S. publisher. His most significant achievement was as founder of the eponymous Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897.-Biography:...
, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt. Knopf paid special attention to the quality of printing, binding, and design in his books, and earned a reputation as a purist in both content and presentation.
Asked how to say his name, Knopf told the Literary Digest
Literary Digest
The Literary Digest was an influential general interest weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, Public Opinion and Current Opinion.-History:...
: "Sound the k: k'nupf."
Biography
Knopf was born into a Jewish family in New York City. His father Samuel Knopf was an advertising executive and financial consultant, his mother was Ida Japhe, and his brother Edwin H. KnopfEdwin H. Knopf
Edwin H. Knopf was an American film producer, film director, and screenwriter.-Biography:He was born in New York City and went to work early in his life in the editorial department of his brother Alfred A. Knopf's publishing business.After trying his hand at acting, Edwin turned to producing in 1928...
, who worked for Alfred briefly, then became a film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
. Alfred attended Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, where he was a pre-law student and a member of the Peithologian Society
Peithologian Society
The Peithologian Society was an undergraduate literary organization at Columbia University. It was founded in 1806, four years after Columbia's first literary group, the Philolexian Society, by freshmen who were disenfranchised by Philolexian's requirement that its members be upperclassmen...
, a debating and literary club. He began to show an interest in publishing during his senior year, becoming advertising manager of an undergraduate magazine. His interest in publishing was allegedly fostered by a correspondence with British author John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
. After visiting Galsworthy in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Knopf gave up his plans for a law career, and upon his return went into publishing.
After receiving his B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1912, Knopf worked as a clerk at Doubleday (1912–1913), then as an editorial assistant to Michael Kennerly (1914). He founded his own publishing house in 1915. The company initially emphasized European, especially Russian, literature, hence the choice of the borzoi
Borzoi
The borzoi is a breed of domestic dog also called the Russian wolfhound and descended from dogs brought to Russia from central Asian countries. It is similar in shape to a greyhound, and is also a member of the sighthound family.The system by which Russians over the ages named their sighthounds...
as a colophon
Colophon (publishing)
In publishing, a colophon is either:* A brief description of publication or production notes relevant to the edition, in modern books usually located at the reverse of the title page, but can also sometimes be located at the end of the book, or...
. At that time European literature was largely neglected by American publishers; Knopf published authors such as Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
, E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
, Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
and Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
.
Knopf also published many American authors, including Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken
Conrad Potter Aiken was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, a play and an autobiography.-Early years:...
, James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, James M. Cain
James M. Cain
James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
, Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
, Shirley Ann Grau
Shirley Ann Grau
Shirley Ann Grau Born in New Orleans, her work is set primarily in the Deep South, and explores issues of race and gender. She spent much of her childhood in rural Alabama with her mother. She graduated in 1950 from Newcomb College of Tulane University. Her 1964 saga The Keepers of the House was...
, Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, Vachel Lindsay
Vachel Lindsay
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered the father of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted...
, H.L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...
, John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, and Knopf's own favorite, Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
. From 1924 to 1934, he published the famous literary magazine founded by Mencken and Nathan, The American Mercury
The American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
. He often developed a personal friendship with his authors. Knopf's personal interest in the fields of history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
led to close friendships in the academic community with such noted historians as Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...
, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. was an American historian and social critic whose work explored the American liberalism of political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"...
, and Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years...
. A prominent Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
until Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, Knopf often drew legislators into lengthy correspondence by mail.
Knopf himself was also an author. His writings include Some Random Recollections, Publishing Then and Now, Portrait of a Publisher, Blanche W. Knopf: July 30, 1894-June 4, 1966, and Sixty Photographs.
When Knopf's son, Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.
Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.
Alfred Abraham Knopf, Jr. was one of the founders of Atheneum Publishers in 1959.-Biography:He was the only child of publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. and Blanche Wolf. He was born in White Plains, New York, on June 17, 1918. At 7, in 1925 he was sent to a boarding school, first at the Riverdale...
, left the company in 1959 to found Atheneum Publishers, Alfred and Blanche became concerned about the eventual fate of their publishing house, which had always been a family business. The problem was solved in 1960, when Knopf merged with Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, which was owned by the Knopf's close friends Bennett Cerf
Bennett Cerf
Bennett Alfred Cerf was a publisher and co-founder of Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?.-Biography:Bennett Cerf...
and Donald Klopfer. Knopf retained complete editorial control for five years, and then gave up only his right to veto other editors' manuscript selections. The editorial departments of the two companies remain separate, and Knopf, Inc., retains its distinctive character. Knopf called the merger "a perfect marriage."
Random House itself eventually became a division of Bertelsmann AG, a large multinational media company. The Knopf imprint remains in existence.
Blanche Knopf
Blanche Knopf
Blanche Wolf Knopf was the president of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and wife of publisher Alfred Knopf, with whom she established the firm in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled the world seeking new authors. Blanche was especially influential in having European and Latin American literature translated...
died in June 1966. Alfred remarried in April of the following year, to Helen Norcross Hedrick. He died of congestive heart failure
Congestive heart failure
Heart failure often called congestive heart failure is generally defined as the inability of the heart to supply sufficient blood flow to meet the needs of the body. Heart failure can cause a number of symptoms including shortness of breath, leg swelling, and exercise intolerance. The condition...
on August 11, 1984, at his estate in Purchase, New York
Purchase, New York
Purchase, New York is a hamlet of the town of Harrison, in Westchester County. Its ZIP code is 10577. Its name is derived from Harrison's purchase, for Harrison could have as much land as he could ride in one day...
.
Personality
Knopf had little enthusiasm for most of the changes that took place in the publishing industry during his lifetime. "Too many books are published, and they are overpriced," he told The Saturday Review. These are things "about which all publishers agree, and about which no publisher does anything." The most fundamental change he noted was the increased importance of the editor. "In the early days, things were quite simple. The books came in; we published them as written... A publisher was regarded--and so, in turn, was the writer--as a pro. A writer's job was to write a book and give it to you." And he remarked to Shenker: "I guess business became more complicated and publishers less literate. It ceased to be the fact that publishers publish and authors write. Today authors submit manuscripts and editors write books." The editor is now hired largely to acquire books, "and if he can't get good books, he usually takes what he can get--books that are not so good. And then he sometimes wrecks himself trying to make a silk purse out of what can never become anything but a sow's ear."Knopf was generally unimpressed with current literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, though he admired John Hersey
John Hersey
John Richard Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling devices of the novel are fused with non-fiction reportage...
, John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...
, and a few other contemporary authors. In Publishing Then and Now he wrote: "Frequently... our American author, whatever his age, experience in life, and technical knowledge, simply can't write. I don't mean that he is not the master of a prose style of elegance and distinction; I mean that he can't write simple straightforward and correct English. And here, only an exceptional editor will really help him." American authors are not very durable, he said in 1964, and "there are no giants in Europe now." And though twelve Knopf authors had won Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s, Knopf acknowledged that "some Nobel Prize books aren't very good," calling Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago (novel)
Doctor Zhivago is a 20th century novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet...
, for example, "incredibly tedious... If Krushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
had banned it for dullness instead of its political implications, he might have been in the clear."
Knopf also lamented the "shockingly bad taste" that he felt characterizes much modern fiction, and warned of the danger of a "legal backlash" against pornography, a possible revival of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
.
This outspoken aspect of his character sometimes found voice in letters of complaint to hotels, restaurants, and stores that failed to meet his high standards. These letters grew increasingly frequent and more severe as he aged. One striking example is the six-year-long war of words he waged against the Eastman Kodak Company over a roll of lost film http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/aakser2.html.