Alfred A. Knopf

• Born: September 12, 1892
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: August 11, 1984
• Place of death: Purchase, New York

Publisher

An innovative publisher, Knopf developed the use of corporate structures and advertising to sell books to a broad public. He insisted on maintaining literary and production quality while seeking ways to keep prices low.

Area of achievement: Publishing

Early Life

Alfred A. Knopf (kuh-NUHPF) was born in New York City in 1892 to Samuel and Ida Jaffee Knopf. His father worked in advertising and finance. Knopf entered Columbia University in 1908 and graduated in 1912. He planned to enter Harvard Law School until a trip to England to meet novelist John Galsworthy changed his plans in favor of a career in publishing.

Upon his return, his father helped him obtain a position with Doubleday publishers. There Knopf obtained rights to the works of Joseph Conrad and brought him to Doubleday as a client. It was also during this time that Knopf was first introduced to H. L. Mencken, whom he approached at the Baltimore Sun to promote Conrad. Knopf left Doubleday in 1914 to work for publisher Mitchell Kennerly. A year later Knopf tried to form a partnership with the publishing house Doran. After being rejected, he decided to start his own business. His father gave him an office, and with his fiancé, Blanche Wolf, he began Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf had met Wolf his senior year at Columbia, and she shared his passion for literature along with the more liberal ideas emerging from the World War I generation. They were married in 1916.

Life’s Work

Prior to World War I, the American publishing industry had focused on selling to the privileged classes of the East Coast. Knopf, however, brought to the business three important factors. First, he shared his father’s acumen for advertising, along with a flamboyant personality. Second, his time working with Kennerly’s experiments had given him new ideas regarding how a publishing firm should be operated. Third, he and his wife shared a strong sense of being part of a new generation that was much more egalitarian; the time was ripe to spread literature to all people.

The influence of his visit to Galsworthy and his success with Conrad placed his initial focus on introducing foreign literature to the American public. Knopf emphasized Russian literature, and his wife designed the Borzoi colophon. The borzoi is a Russian wolfhound, and this symbol became one of the best recognized symbols in publishing. The Knopfs even owned some of the dogs themselves.

Knopf competed with other new publishers of his generation such as Simon and Schuster, Harcourt and Brace, and Random House. One of his early successes was the acquisition from Houghton Mifflin of Willa Cather, who won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. He went on to introduce some of the biggest names in literature of the 1920’s, including T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and helped make his friend Mencken into one of the most influential writers of the era.

Knopf fought industry trends to cheapen books. He joined a lawsuit in 1939 against the Macy’s department store, which was attempting to skirt antitrust laws by setting up “book clubs.” During the Red Scare of the 1950’s, editor Angus Cameron was forced to resign from Little, Brown. Cameron was promptly hired by Knopf. When congratulated on standing against McCarthyism (the congressional hunt for Communists and other subversives), Knopf denied any bravery, saying politics had nothing to do with his decision. Cameron worked for him because he was a good editor.

Despite his standards, Knopf sometimes bent to the needs of business. Ignoring the rhetoric of Mencken that the Great Depression was a myth, Knopf made adjustments to the production of his books to reduce costs during that time. He also endorsed the Cheney Report of 1932, which was highly critical of the publishing industry and called for sweeping reforms.

The Knopfs had expected that their only son, Alfred “Pat,” Jr., would inherit the business. However, he chafed for more independence in making decisions. Therefore, in 1958, he resigned and started his own company, Atheneum Publishers. The increasing pace of mergers put pressure on Knopf to follow the business trends of the 1950’s. After his son’s resignation, he turned to his friend Donald Klopfer at Random House, which had been purchased by RCA. After Knopf made a deal to maintain control of the books published under the Knopf name, Random House purchased the company in 1960.

After the death of his wife in 1966, Knopf continued with her goal to promote minority writers, bringing Toni Morrison to Knopf in 1973. Though he remarried, to novelist Helen Norcross Hedrick, he had lost his most important business partner. Growing increasingly critical of the trends in publishing, he began to withdraw from daily operations. He died of congestive heart failure in 1984.

Significance

John Tebbel, from the Saturday Review, stated that Knopf’s accomplishment was to use modern business techniques to maintain the literary quality of the nineteenth century. Sixteen authors published by Knopf won the Nobel Prize, and twenty-six were given a Pulitzer Prize. Although most readers indicate they do not care who publishes a book, the Borzoi remains one of the best known symbols in publishing, and Knopf is widely known for its founder’s work to maintain high standards in the industry.

From the beginning Knopf set out to make his books distinctive. He paid close attention to typesetting, earning praises from the Typophiles, who later printed his personal memoirs. He also looked for distinctive cover designs and insisted on the highest-quality printing of his books, winning more awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts than any other mass-market publisher except Little, Brown. Because of the standards Knopf set for his books, he adopted modern business practices to keep down the prices. He divided his company into divisions that focused on producing, distributing, marketing, and selling the books. He employed advertising ideas that made direct, personal appeals to the reader with attractive new art styles, and he is known for introducing the idea of the “sandwich board”: He paid people to walk about with large advertising signs hanging over their shoulders.

Bibliography

Knopf, Alfred A. Portrait of a Publisher, 1915-1965. New York: The Typophiles, 1965.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Publishing Then and Now, 1912-1964. New York: New York Public Library, 1964. These two books contain a collection of talks given by and notes made by Knopf. They contain his opinions of and his recollections of the publishing industry throughout his career.

Madison, Charles Allan. Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact of Jewish Writing on American Culture. New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1976. This book helps explain the role Knopf played as a publisher, giving a brief summary of Knopf as the first Jew to break into mainstream American publishing.

Tebbel, John. Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of American Book Publishing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. This book follows the American publishing industry from its rise in antebellum America as a luxury reserved for the rich through the modern phase of corporate mergers, where the financial viability of a book is the chief concern. It places Knopf within the historical context of his contributions to publishing, and it chronicles his relationships (both good and bad) with other publishers, describes his innovations, and tells of the times when he followed the crowd in order to preserve his business.

Wycherley, H. Alan. “Mencken and Knopf: The Editor and His Publisher.” American Quarterly 16, no. 3 (Autumn, 1964): 460-472. This article chronicles one of the strangest relationships in Knopf’s life. Though accused of being anti-Semitic, Mencken maintained a close professional relationship with Knopf throughout his life.