Knox Breckenridge Burger (November 1, 1922–January 4, 2010) was an editor, writer, and literary agent who lived in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. He published Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...

's first short-story and founded Knox Burger & Associates, a literary agency with his wife.

Early life

Burger was born in New York City and lived in early life in Westchester County. Carl Burger, his father, was an illustrator.

While serving in World War II, Burger contributed to Yank

Yank, the Army Weekly

Yank, the Army Weekly was a weekly magazine published by the United States military during World War II. The idea for the magazine came from Egbert White, who had worked on Stars and Stripes during World War I. He proposed the idea to the Army in early 1942, and accepted a commission as Lieutenant...

, the Army Weekly 1943-1944. In a B-29 bomb squadron

B-29 Superfortress

The B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing that was flown primarily by the United States Air Forces in late-World War II and through the Korean War. The B-29 was one of the largest aircraft to see service during World War II...

 in the Marianas, Burger covered a number of missions over Japan, and was transferred to the Yank Saipan bureau late summer 1945 just before the Japanese surrender. Burger moved north to Tokyo, where he was, for a few months, the editor of the Far East edition of Yank, and wrote numerous stories about the occupation.

Burger, and his father, the author and illustrator Carl Burger

Carl Burger

Carl V. Burger was native to Maryville, Tennessee, known for his children's’ and youth literature illustrations for the Newberry Award winning novel Old Yeller by Fred Gipson; Little Rascal by Sterling North, and The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford.- Education :His parents were a banker,...

, graduated from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

.

Career

After the war, Burger worked as the fiction editor of Collier's. He then moved on to editing for Dell and Fawcett Publications. In 1970, he founded Knox Burger and Associates, a literary agency which later merged with the Harold Ober agency.

Burger worked with writers including Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...

, John D. MacDonald

John D. MacDonald

John Dann MacDonald was an American crime and suspense novelist and short story writer.MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida...

, John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

, Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York–set series, about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively...

, Jack Finney

Jack Finney

Jack Finney was an American author. His best-known works are science fiction and thrillers, including The Body Snatchers and Time and Again. The former was the basis for the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its remakes.-Biography:Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and given the...

, Horace McCoy

Horace McCoy

Horace McCoy was an American writer whose hardboiled novels took place during the Great Depression. His best-known novel is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , which was made into a movie of the same name in 1969, fourteen years after McCoy's death.-Early life:McCoy was born in Pegram, Tennessee...

, Walter Tevis

Walter Tevis

Walter Stone Tevis was an American novelist and short story writer. Three of his six novels were adapted into major films: The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell to Earth...

, MacKinlay Kantor

MacKinlay Kantor

MacKinlay Kantor , born Benjamin McKinlay Kantor, was an American journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He wrote more than 30 novels, several based on the American Civil War, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956 for his 1955 novel Andersonville, about the Confederate prisoner of war camp...

, Morris West

Morris West

Morris Langlo West AO was an Australian novelist and playwright, best known for his novels The Devil's Advocate , The Shoes of the Fisherman , and The Clowns of God . His books were published in 27 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide...

, Donald Westlake, Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith is an American mystery novelist.-Early life and education:Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing in 1964...

, and Louis L'Amour

Louis L'Amour

Louis Dearborn L'Amour was an American author. His books consisted primarily of Western fiction novels , however he also wrote historical fiction , science fiction , nonfiction , as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into movies...

. In 1980 he sold "Gorky Park

Gorky Park (novel)

Gorky Park is a 1981 crime novel written by Martin Cruz Smith set in the Soviet Union. It follows Arkady Renko, a chief investigator for the Militsiya, who is assigned to a case involving three corpses found in Gorky Park, an amusement park in Moscow, who have had their faces and fingertips cut off...

" to 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,...

 for $1 million.

In 2000, Knox Burger donated his archive to the Fales Library

Fales Library

New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections is located on the third floor of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardia Place and the Schwartz Plaza, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It houses nearly 200,000...

 of New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

.