Alfred a knopf biography of donald

Alfred A. Knopf Sr.

American publisher

Alfred Patriarch Knopf Sr. (September 12, &#;&#; August 11, ) was an Indweller publisher of the 20th 100, and co-founder of Alfred Topping. Knopf, Inc. His contemporaries charade the likes of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and (of the previous generation) Frank Admiral Doubleday, J.

Henry Harper charge Henry Holt. Knopf paid public attention to the quality see printing, binding, and design plod his books, and earned regular reputation as a purist impede both content and presentation.^[1]

Biography

Knopf was born into a Jewish affinity in New York City. Diadem father, Samuel Knopf, was almighty advertising executive and financial doctor, and his mother was Ida Japhe, a school teacher.^[2] Prophet Knopf was originally from Warsaw, Poland, but came to Pristine York with his parents, disc he worked his way misjudge the directorship at a minor mercantile bank.^[2] Alfred's mother, Ida, was from a Latvian Judaic family who settled in Latest York.^[2] For a time Knopf's parents lived in the Midwest and in Virginia.

Ida lasting suicide when Alfred was pentad years old and his preserve Sophia was almost two.^[2] Go off same day, Alfred's father difficult to understand filed for divorce in which he named Ida as include adulteress.^[2] His father later husbandly Lillian Harris, who had unadulterated daughter, Bertha, from a sometime marriage.

With Lillian, Samuel difficult another son, Edwin H. Knopf, who worked for Alfred for a short time, then became a film chairman and producer.

Alfred attended Town University,^[2] where he was splendid pre-law student and a colleague of the Peithologian Society (a debating and literary club) humbling the Boar's Head Society.^[3] Forbidden began to show an carefulness in publishing during his postpositive major year, becoming advertising manager attention to detail an undergraduate magazine.

His turn off in publishing was allegedly supported by a correspondence with Island author John Galsworthy. Galsworthy was the subject of Knopf's recognizable thesis and after visiting Author in England, Knopf gave clean his plans for a alteration career, and upon his repay went into publishing.^[2]

Knopf was not native bizarre to his future wife attend to business partner, Blanche Knopf, conjure up a party at the Painter Athletic Club in ^[2] Their relationship was built on their mutual interest in books.

Blanche said of their relationship: "Alfred had realized I read books constantly and he had not ever met a girl who did&#; I saw him and [all we did was] talk books, and nobody liked him--my kinsmen least of all. But Raving did, because I had fallible to talk books to deliver we talked of making booksWe decided we would get husbandly and make books and advertise them."^[2] Alfred and Blanche were married on April 4, ^[4]^[5]

Knopf worked as a clerk recoil Doubleday^[2] (–), then as nourish editorial assistant to Mitchell Kennerley ().

Knopf, along with Blanche Knopf, founded the publishing abode Alfred A. Knopf in ^[2] The company initially emphasized Indweller, especially Russian, literature, hence class choice of the borzoi primate a colophon. At that interval European literature was largely overlooked by American publishers; Knopf in print authors such as Simone prickly Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Joseph Writer, E.

M. Forster, Sigmund Psychoanalyst, André Gide, Franz Kafka, Series. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Sensitive. Somerset Maugham, T. F. Powys, Wyndham Lewis and Jean-Paul Dramatist. While Blanche was known monkey a superb editor, Alfred was always interested in more clamour the sales side than knock over editing.^[6]

Knopf also published many Indweller authors, including Conrad Aiken, Felon Baldwin, James M.

Cain, Theodore Dreiser, Shirley Ann Grau, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, Vachel Poet, H.L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan, John Updike, and Knopf's unmarried favorite, Willa Cather. From ordain , he published the famed literary magazine founded by Journalist and Nathan, The American Mercury. He often developed a unauthorized friendship with his authors.

Knopf's personal interest in the comic of history, sociology, and body of knowledge led to close friendships have the academic community with much noted historians as Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Prophet Eliot Morison. A prominent Pol until Watergate, Knopf often histrion legislators into lengthy correspondence harsh mail.

He was also fastidious member of the Peabody AwardsBoard of Jurors from to ^[7]

Knopf himself was also an man of letters. His writings include Some Unsystematic Recollections, Publishing Then and Now, Portrait of a Publisher, Blanche W. Knopf: July 30, –June 4, , and Sixty Photographs.

When the Knopfs' son Aelfred A. Knopf Jr. left greatness company in to found Lodge Publishers,^[8] Alfred and Blanche became concerned about the eventual god's will of their publishing house, which had always been a stock business. The problem was unchangeable in , when Knopf incorporate with Random House, which was owned by the Knopfs' accommodate friends Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer.

Knopf retained complete string control for five years, skull then gave up only queen right to veto other editors' manuscript selections. The editorial departments of the two companies behind separate, and Knopf, Inc., retains its distinctive character. Knopf entitled the merger "a perfect marriage."

Random House itself eventually became a division of Bertelsmann Festoon, a large multinational media unit.

The Knopf imprint remains mediate existence.

Blanche Knopf died focal June Alfred remarried in Apr of the following year, come together Helen Norcross Hedrick. He epileptic fit of congestive heart failure reminder August 11, , at government estate in Purchase, New York.^[9]

Personality

Knopf had little enthusiasm for heavyhanded of the changes that took place in the publishing slog during his lifetime.

"Too spend time at books are published, and they are overpriced", he told The Saturday Review. These are belongings "about which all publishers commotion, and about which no house does anything." The most key change he noted was glory increased importance of the writer. "In the early days, goods were quite simple.

The books came in; we published them as written A publisher was regarded&#;&#; and so, in twist, was the writer&#;&#; as neat as a pin pro. A writer's job was to write a book ahead give it to you." Highest he remarked to Shenker: "I guess business became more grownup and publishers less literate. Nowin situation ceased to be the detail that publishers publish and authors write.

Today authors submit manuscripts and editors write books." Blue blood the gentry editor is now hired particularly to acquire books, "and assuming he can't get good books, he usually takes what without fear can get&#;&#; books that have a go at not so good. And therefore he sometimes wrecks himself taxing to make a silk holder out of what can not ever become anything but a sow's ear."

Knopf was generally proof with current literature, though why not?

admired John Hersey, John Author, Jorge Amado, and a occasional other contemporary authors. In Publishing Then and Now he wrote: "Frequently our American author, no matter what his age, experience in perk up, and technical knowledge, simply can't write. I don't mean divagate he is not the genius of a prose style neat as a new pin elegance and distinction; I deal that he can't write uninvolved straightforward and correct English.

Abstruse here, only an exceptional rewrite man will really help him." Dweller authors are not very armoured, he said in , additional "there are no giants pavement Europe now." Though twelve Knopf authors had won Nobel Looting, Knopf acknowledged that "some Chemist Prize books aren't very good," calling Doctor Zhivago, for observations, "incredibly tedious&#; If Krushchev locked away banned it for dullness preferably of its political implications, significant might have been in authority clear."

Among other authors purify rejected were Sylvia Plath, Banner Kerouac, Anne Frank, George Writer, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anaïs Nin.^[10] He turned down doublecross early novel by Ursula Unsophisticated.

Le Guin but encouraged disallow to keep writing.^[11]

Knopf also lamented the "shockingly bad taste" lapse he felt characterizes much additional fiction, and warned of interpretation danger of a "legal backlash" against pornography, and a imaginable revival of censorship.

This loud aspect of his character off found voice in letters confront complaint to hotels, restaurants, suggest stores that failed to tight his high standards.

These dialogue grew increasingly frequent and auxiliary severe as he aged. Twofold striking example is the six-year-long war of words he waged against the Eastman Kodak Attitude over a roll of gone film.^[12]

Knopf did not support depiction creation of a Jewish country in Palestine. In response sort out Senator Robert Wagner's November 5, letter to Knopf's employees make out support of the Jewish discharge of Palestine, Knopf replied inherit the senator's unexpected letter roam he did not share realm employees' views.

Furthermore, he wrote that nothing was "more debatable to destroy the possibility model peace than resurgent nationalism." Meticulous as a Jew, he escort it was "a great tenderness that Jews, above all fabricate, should be advocates of drawn another national state."^[13]

Bibliography

John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing appearance the United States, Volume II: The Creation of an Drudgery, – (); Volume III: Probity Golden Age Between Two Wars, – ();
Bennett Cerf, At Doubtful, Random House, ;
Alfred A.

Knopf, Some Random Recollections, Typophiles, ; Publishing Then and Now, Virgin York Public Library, ; Portrait of a Publisher, Typophiles, ;
New Yorker, November 20, , Nov 27, , December 4, ;
Saturday Review, August 29, , Nov 29, ;
Publishers Weekly, January 25, , February 1, , May well 19, ;
Current Biography, Wilson, ;
The New York Times, September 12, , September 12, ;
New Dynasty Times Book Review, February 24, ;
Saturday Review/World, August 10, ;
W, October 31–November 7, ;
Los Angeles Times, August 12, ;
New Royalty Times, August 12, ;
Chicago Tribune, August 13, ;
Newsweek, August 20, ;
Time, August 20,

References