Knopf

About Knopf

Alfred A. Knopf, usually called Knopf, is an American literary publisher founded in New York City in 1915 by Alfred A. Knopf and Blanche Knopf (then his fiancee, later his wife), and it is now an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group within Penguin Random House.

Alfred started with a one-room office and just under five thousand dollars, much of it advanced by his father Samuel, and the business was incorporated in 1918. Blanche, vice-president from 1921 and president from 1957, built its links with European and South American writers and is credited with the firm's borzoi dog colophon. From 1923 Knopf also published H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan's magazine The American Mercury.

Willa Cather published sixteen books with Knopf, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet (1923) became one of its most successful titles, and its list included Thomas Mann, Langston Hughes, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and John Updike. Editor Judith Jones later acquired Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The Knopfs sold the firm to Random House in 1960, and Knopf kept its editorial independence as an imprint. It was combined with Doubleday in 2009 to form Knopf Doubleday, which became part of Penguin Random House when that group was formed in 2013.

How to spot a Knopf first edition

• Before about 1933 Knopf put no first edition statement on first printings; reprints were marked on the copyright page ("Second Printing", "Third Printing" and so on), so a copy with no printing note is the first.
• A note reading "First and second printings before publication" means the copy belongs to the second printing, not the first.
• From about 1933 or 1934 Knopf first printings state "First Edition" on the copyright page, or "First American Edition" when the book had already appeared abroad.