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The House of Knopf: Historical Overview
A Borzoi book on a library table or on the bookshelf
is a mark of distinction always.
—The American Mercury,
Knopf Advertisement, 1928
The publishing house of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. was
shaped by the personalities of its founders, Alfred A. and
Blanche Wolf Knopf. The brightly colored exterior and elegant
typography of a Borzoi book produced by the firm paralleled
Alfred Knopf’s penchant for sartorial display, and
his aggressive salesmanship and love of good talk found its
way into the company’s advertising copy imploring booksellers
and the general reader to “Buy a Borzoi Book today!”
Blanche Knopf’s affinity for foreign cultures, passionate
love of good literature, and appreciation of the creative
impulse brought a distinctive touch to the Knopf list. The
Knopfs, the first husband-and-wife team among major
American book publishers, were above all voracious, wideranging
readers. (Their magnificent library is now at the
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.) The
couple’s willingness to publish anything of significance
that was of personal interest to them diversified the firm’s
list beyond belles lettres and into American history, music,
gastronomy, photography, and environmental conservation.
Few publishers have been so intimately involved in
every phase of the trade, including not only the cultivation
of authors and acquisition of manuscripts but also book
design, production, and marketing.
The Knopfs’ involvement in the books they published
insured a remarkable consistency—the publishing historian
John Tebbel has called the Knopf list a “seamless
web”—over a period of nearly seven decades. Clifton Fadiman,
in his anthology Fifty Years: Borzoi Books
1915–1965, cites other factors in the Knopf success formula,
such as the establishment of a distinctive design
and manufacturing style and the firm’s pioneering publication
of important European and, later, Latin American
and Japanese literature in translation. To this Fadiman
adds a more elusive quality of the Knopfs: their “quiet
elaboration of a classically restrained relationship between
author and publisher.” This attitude of respect and sincere
appreciation for their authors’ creative gifts was certainly
not unique to the Knopfs, but they seemed to do a better job
of communicating it than other publishers. In correspondence
with the firm, the authors featured in this volume
return again and again to the same theme—their loyalty
to the publishers who saw to it that their works were handsomely
presented, treated them fairly without exception,
and regarded them as part of their circle of friends. As the
Knopf advertising insistently proclaimed, “a publisher is
always known by the company it keeps.” With reference to
that standard, the house of Knopf must be regarded as one
of the most important American publishers of the twentieth
century.
Blanche Wolf Knopf in the 1930s. The shot of Blanche Knopf was
taken by her husband, an avid amateur photographer, who wrote
that the picture was “as good as any portrait I have ever taken”
(Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Archive, Harry Ransom Center,
University of Texas at Austin).
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The House of Knopf: Historical Overview DLB 355
This photograph of Alfred A. Knopf was taken in his office in the 1930s, probably for an article in Publishers’ Weekly
(Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Archive, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin).
The Knopfs’ Early Years
Born 12 September 1892 to Samuel and Ida Japhe
Knopf, Alfred A. Knopf grew up in a privileged household
in New York, headed by his father, a wealthy advertising
man of Russian Jewish extraction. His mother, who may
have committed suicide, died when he was four years old.
In 1908 Knopf entered Columbia College, where he was
bored by most of his classes but inspired by a few professors,
including Joel E. Spingarn, who prompted Alfred to begin
collecting books. There were early signs of the boldness that
later led to his success in business. Assigned to write an
essay on a contemporary author, Knopf began a correspondence
with John Galsworthy. Following his graduation in
1912, he visited Europe and met with Galsworthy, who recommended
the writers W. H. Hudson and Joseph Conrad—both
played a role in Knopf’s earliest publishing
ventures. Knopf also visited bookstores throughout
England and Europe, noting the aesthetic appeal of certain
books and choosing favorite publishers. By the end of
the summer he said, “I came home . . . determined to be a
publisher and not a lawyer as the family had intended.”
Following a stint as an advertising salesman for
The New York Times, Knopf was hired as an accountant
by Doubleday, Page in 1912. He soon managed to
involve himself in every phase of the publishing enterprise.
Because of his familiarity with Conrad, he was
one of the first to read the manuscript of Chance.
Enthusiastic about the novel and displeased with Doubleday’s
lackluster promotion, Knopf wrote to the most
prominent authors of the day requesting testimonial
blurbs, which were compiled into a promotional pamphlet,
published in 1913, that contributed to the sale of
50,000 copies of Chance. Knopf’s enthusiasm for Conrad
led him to form a bond with the iconoclastic journalist
H. L. Mencken, also a Conrad admirer.
In March 1914 Knopf left Doubleday to join the
English-born publisher Mitchell Kennerley as an assistant,
in part because of his admiration for Kennerley’s
commitment to good book design. Knopf honed his publicity
skills and “traveled” for the firm—making important
contacts as he sold Kennerley books to booksellers.
His Kennerley days ended abruptly when the publisher
discovered that his twenty-three-year-old employee was
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DLB 355
The House of Knopf: Historical Overview
about to found his own publishing company and
planned to take a Kennerley author, the popular novelist
Joseph Hergesheimer, along with him.
Blanche Wolf was born in New York 30 July 1894
to Julius and Bertha Wolf. Like her future husband,
Blanche was from an upper-class background (the
Wolfs considered themselves socially superior to the
Knopfs). She was educated privately and graduated
from the Gardner School. She met Alfred A. Knopf in
1911 and, along with his father, encouraged him to
start his own publishing firm. They were married 4
April 1916, while Alfred was still drawing only $25
dollars a week from the company.
* * *
In these excerpts from his memoirs Alfred Knopf
recalls his life growing up in New York and his marriage to
Blanche Wolf.
“Onward and Upward”
Alfred A. Knopf
I was born in New York at what was then 234
Central Park West, September 12th, 1892. My
father, Samuel, was born thirty years earlier in
Russian Poland. The only boy in a family of six
children, he was brought to New York at an early
age. My mother, Ida Japhe, of whom my father
apparently found it difficult to speak, died, I think
a suicide, when I was very young and I have no
memory of her. But in 1949, after Geoffrey Hellman’s
Profile of me appeared in The New Yorker, a
lady, a stranger, wrote me that she had been in
1887-8 in a class my mother taught at a public
school. The letter continued: “She was a splendid
teacher. Not only did she know her subject thoroughly,
but she had that wonderful facility of
being able to impart it to the immature mind. I
loved her. When you were about one year old,
your mother wanted me to see her baby. One of
the things I remember you did was to open your
father’s box of cigars, take one out and proceed to
break it. Your mother said it was perfectly all
right, the cigar cost only fifty cents (father always
had a taste for fine cigars) and you would break a
fifty cent toy just as quickly. You evidently had a
taste for cigars at an early age.” . . .
I have a few memories of my early childhood, but
one stands out clearly--walking with a Negro manservant
along the bluff overlooking a river and I think this
must have been in Cincinnati about 1895 when my
father was in business there.
Alfred Knopf as a young man (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Archive,
Harry Ransom Center, University
of Texas at Austin)
Around the turn of the century we moved to
what for us was the City--a three story and basement
house on the East Side of Convent Avenue
just below 148th Street . . .
We were a mixed-up family by [1901].
There was my sister Sophia, Elizabeth, a stepsister,
child of my stepmother by her first marriage
and several years older than the rest of us, and
my half brother Edwin, who was born in 1899.
The reader can imagine how badly at times such
an assortment got along with one another. But
on the whole I spent my time with other boys
though I can only remember the Blacks who
lived across the street . . . , the Perines who lived
next door to the south and Julian Marx whom we
didn’t much like. But there must have been oth-
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The House of Knopf: Historical Overview DLB 355
ers for we spent many an afternoon chasing and
being chased by ‘gangs’ of what we called ‘micks.’
I am not too clear about the exact order of
my schooling. I think I went for a while to Public
School #46 at 156th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.
Then a brief spell at Horace Mann where I
developed kleptomania and stole—yes—books.
When, before long, I was found out, Father managed
somehow to remove me from the school
without any publicity and then enrolled me at P.S.
#186 on 145th Street, east of Broadway. There was
a branch of the Public Library next door. I frequented
it and another branch on St. Nicholas
Avenue near 155th Street . . . In that way I discovered
Conan Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes remains
to this day the only wholly satisfying detective I
have ever read about . . .
Father must have been prospering in those
days because we lived well. However, I don’t
remember what his business was at the time and
it may be that by present-day standards his
income was very modest. Consider the house in
which the six of us lived, with a cook, a chambermaid-waitress-laundress
and a governess. The help
was almost always Irish, but one governess was a
Danish lady of distinguished presence who dined
with the family. . . .
We went to the country every summer.
Except for one season on the Jersey coast, we were
usually in Far Rockaway on the south shore of
Long Island . . . Alfred Stieglitz summered not far
away and toward sunset used to come tramping
down the road with his wife (she was related by
marriage to my stepmother) both carrying his
camera, tripod and other equipment. . . .
We observed only the Jewish Holy Days,
though on the Day of Atonement, a solemn day of
fasting for Jews who took the faith really seriously,
we children were always taken to the Plaza for
lunch which sort of made up for the boredom of
the services. Most reformed Jews were no longer
religious in a formal sense. I first went to Temple
Israel of Harlem, Maurice Harris, Rabbi, and my
only recollection is of hearing John D. Rockefeller
for the first time. The good teacher impressed on
us that though he was the world’s richest man, he
had to live on a diet of crackers and milk. Later
Father joined the much more fashionable Congregation
of Temple Beth-El at 76th Street and Fifth
Avenue and there, though we spent much time
running three-legged races in the basement with
the son of the Rabbi, Samuel Schulman, as the
ringleader, I must have learned something for I
was confirmed, had to make some kind of a talk in
the Temple and was awarded a silver medal. Later,
onward and upward as the New York Jewish bourgeoisie
usually moved, we worshipped at Temple
Emanu-El, first at 43rd and now at 66th Street on
Fifth Avenue. One could go no higher. (Later
Beth-El was torn down and in June 1932 when
Father was buried from Emanu-El old Dr. Schulman
delivered the Eulogy.) . . .
* * *
At Columbia University, Alfred Knopf enrolled in
one of Spingarn’s final classes. Author of A History of
Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (1899) and
The New Criticism (1911), Spingarn taught at
Columbia from 1899 to 1911 and went on to become
one of the first white leaders of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People.
Knopf wrote a prize-competition essay on Galsworthy’s
works that he sent to Galsworthy, sparking a lifelong
correspondence and friendship. Galsworthy never
published with Knopf but was helpful to the aspiring
publisher early on in Knopf’s career.
John Galsworthy to Alfred A. Knopf,
15 February 1911
Dear Mr. Knopf
Thank you very warmly for your letter and
the copy of your essay. It was most interesting to
read and is surely quite a remarkable effort for
your age. Of course there are differences of judgement
between us, but I think you are right in placing
‘The Man of Property’ and ‘Fraternity’ at the
top of the novels. I don’t know whether I agree
that ‘Justice’ is superior to ‘Strife’; it is in spirit, I
think, but is not the equal of ‘Strife’ in its dramatic
quality—
I am glad you speak well of the short things,
or rather, I am glad you like them.
I don’t agree that your style is “rather
wretched”; it is clear, terse, and manages to say
what you want to say. If your essay does not
receive its reward, it will be, I think, because you
have rather overdone the description of plot and
quotation in proportion to analysis of spirit,
style, and mood; but I hope very sincerely it will
get you the prize. Anyway, it has given me much
pleasure.
Yours very truly
John Galsworthy
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The House of Knopf: Historical Overview
A 1912 letter from John Galsworthy to Alfred Knopf, following through on the author’s suggestion that Knopf should pursue the
American publication of W. H. Hudson (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Archive, Harry Ransom Center,
University of Texas at Austin)
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The House of Knopf: Historical Overview DLB 355
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
With seed money from Samuel Knopf, the firm of
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. began its existence in May 1915, a
couple of months after Alfred and Blanche’s engagement,
with the publication of Émile Augier’s Four Plays. Ten
other titles appeared during Knopf’s first year. The firm’s
headquarters were located in one room at 220 West 42nd
Street in Manhattan. From the outset the Knopf list
included a large proportion of foreign authors, especially
French and Russian ones, in part because it was relatively
easy to obtain their American rights and production costs
were kept low by using English sheets instead of resetting
text. Borzoi Books, as they were named because of Blanche’s
short-lived attachment to the dog breed, featured decorated
bindings, eye-catching dust jackets, and tasteful typography.
In summer 1918 Alfred became president of the firm,
a newly created title he held for thirty-nine years.
* * *
In these excerpts from his memoirs Knopf recalls the
early years of his publishing house and his marriage to
Blanche, including the birth of their only child, Pat, in
1918.
“Not Doing Too Well”
Alfred A. Knopf
. . . Blanche and I finally felt we could risk marriage,
and on the sixteenth of April, 1916, we were
married at the St. Regis, which still had a beautiful
suite on the second floor which overlooked Fifth
Avenue. The good hotels had not yet found it economically
necessary to rent their best fronts to retail
stores. Indeed, the St. Regis has left this room
exactly as it was in 1915, and in 1965 the Chevaliers
de Tastevin held one of their dinners in it. There was
a large attendance at the ceremony and the elegant
luncheon which followed was attended by friends of
the family and relatives, with only a sprinkling of our
own friends, because we were really only interested
in ourselves and the world of books and music. The
ceremony was performed by a city magistrate, Alexander
H. Geismar, who had married a niece of my
father. He had started out as a rabbi but soon lost his
religious convictions and went into politics. We had
a high regard and affection for him, and in any case
did not want a religious ceremony.
We believed that we should support ourselves
and that we could manage on the seventy-five dollars
a week the business could probably pay me.
On this basis we believed we could afford to
pay seventy-five dollars a month for rent and spent
Alfred Knopf in 1915, the year of the firm’s founding
(photograph by E. O. Hoppé; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Archive, Harry Ransom Center, University
of Texas at Austin)
some weeks before the wedding house-hunting in
Westchester. We found one that suited us but not the
family, and as a result Blanche’s parents insisted on
buying and furnishing a very attractive small house
for us in Greenacres, a newish development in
Hartsdale. . . .
We kept house with a maid-of-all-work to whom
we paid very modest wages, and we entertained a lot.
Authors came up from the city for lunch or dinner
or weekends and often stayed overnight. Later, when
America entered the war, the help problem became
acute and we ended with an unmarried mother from
the Bedford Reformatory whose child delighted
Blanche and our friends by always calling me
“Dada”. We got ourselves the first of two real Borzois—the
most undoggy dogs I have ever
known—and one day a fellow turned up at the office
with a mongrel bull he wanted to sell for fifteen dollars.
I bought him, and Pete remained our devoted
pal until we moved to the city in the fall of 1918.
Then we gave him to Pendleton and Hermine Dudley
in Pleasantville where he became a town character.
He usually hung around a traffic officer, was
thrown more than once by a locomotive, but lived,
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