Cover of "Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar" by Fernando Ortiz.

Armando Chávez-Rivera, an assistant professor at the University of Houston-Victoria, has published four books, among them Cuba per se. Cartas de la diáspora (2009), which summarizes extensive information about Cuban writers located off the island. He worked as a journalist for more than a decade in Latin America, with long stays in various countries in the region, and has published in magazines and popular journals. Currently his academic research is concentrated on Spanish-American literature while he maintains his work as a columnist for the Latin American Data Base, a unit of the Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico. His research at the Ransom Center was funded by the…

Publicity photo of Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and Julia Child by Paul Child.

The Ransom Center holds the Knopf Inc. archive, which includes material related to the publication of the groundbreaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. View photos and read some of the letters that document the book’s progress and publication over several years.

Alfred A. and Blanche Knopf were the paragons of American literary publishing. For the past 12 years my colleague Cathy Henderson and I have collected documents from the massive Knopf, Inc. archive at the Ransom Center. These have now been published in The House of Knopf, part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) series. (Just for the record, it weighs in at 3.8 pounds and has bragging rights as the longest DLB volume).

We have read thousands of letters to and from Knopf authors, editorial reports, publicity materials, and sales accounts. Despite having lived in their “house,” read their personal letters, and viewed Alfred’s photographs, I don’t feel that I understand either of the Knopfs particularly well. Both were temperamental and rife with contradictions. This may explain why despite their importance in the history of publishing, the Knopfs have yet to be the subjects of a book-length biography, although there have been attempts, and several projects are currently underway.

Alfred and Blanche Knopf were both notoriously demanding of themselves, their editorial staff, and their authors. When Knopf, Inc. burst onto the American publishing scene in 1915, the couple were among the few Jewish publishers. Alfred was famously denied admittance to a lunchtime circle of publishers, whereupon he formed his own. Their status as outsiders may have something to do with their aggressive, take-no-prisoners business style. Or to put it another way, the Knopfs had ‘tude. And they had style. In a button-down world of publishing, Alfred stood out with his lavender shirts and strident ties; a London tailor once refused to make a shirt out of some brightly hued cloth the publisher had chosen. Blanche, attired in Parisian haute couture, lived near the edge, subsisting largely on salads and martinis. As a female publishing executive, she too was a pioneer with something to prove.

Yet the Knopfs had a softer, gentler side. By the 1920s, they had decided to live independent lives in separate apartments, but on weekends they generally retired to “The Hovel” up the Hudson, in Purchase, New York, to live an apparently tranquil country life. There they frequently entertained their friends and authors, who were often the same people. The Knopfs had a knack for engaging their best authors on a personal level, wining and dining them (Alfred was a noted gourmet and oenophile) and exuding charm. Blanche bought a trenchcoat for Albert Camus and gloves for Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred took snapshots and made home movies of the guests. The devotion of these authors and others, such as Carl Van Vechten and H. L. Mencken, radiates from their letters. As Alfred Knopf maintained, “a publishing house is known by the company it keeps,” and by that measure both the Knopfs were the greatest publishers of their day.

[Also, see earlier blog post about the friendship between Blanche Knopf and Albert Camus.]

Blanche and Alfred Knopf, early 1920s. Their first dogs were borzois, which supplied a name for Knopf, Inc.'s famous 'Borzoi Books.' Blanche came to despise them and had switched to other breeds by this time.