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Here you will find:

  1. The history of Alfred A. Knopf
  2. About us: The Borzoi Reader Online
  3. Knopf award winners
  4. Articles from the original Borzoi Reader

 

 



Founded in 1915 by Alfred A. Knopf and his wife Blanche W. Knopf, the house of Knopf has long been one of America's foremost book publishers—known for both the quality of its authors and for the high level of its book design and production.

Throughout its history, Knopf has been dedicated to publishing distinguished fiction and nonfiction. Fully 21 Knopf authors have been honored with the Nobel Prize; 29 have won the National Book Award; 49 have received the Pulitzer Prize; 25 have won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and countless others have won awards of a more specific nature.

Knopf's list of authors has included Willa Cather, John Hersey, Thomas Mann, H.L. Mencken, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Kahlil Gibran, William Maxwell, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Peter Taylor, Richard Hofstadter, and Barbara W. Tuchman, as well as the poets Wallace Stevens and Langston Hughes. In 1968 direction of the firm passed to Robert Gottlieb and, in 1987, to Sonny Mehta. The current Knopf list includes Toni Morrison, John Updike, V.S. Naipaul, Anne Tyler, Richard Ford, Anne Rice, Alice Munro, Jane Smiley, Robert A. Caro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Michael Ondaatje, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elie Wiesel, Oliver Sacks, Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Sue Miller, Allan Gurganus, Carl Hiaasen, James Ellroy, John Keegan, Dr. Andrew Weil, Ernest J. Gaines, and David Allen Sibley, to name a few.

Knopf is one of the country's foremost publishers of poetry. Poets currently published under the Knopf imprint include James Merrill, John Hollander, Marge Piercy, Anne Carson, Mark Strand, Sharon Olds, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, Kenneth Koch, Mary Jo Salter, Philip Levine, J.D. McClatchy, and Daniel Halpern.

Knopf is also known as a leading publisher of cookbooks. Authors include Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Edna Lewis, Joan Nathan, Claudia Roden, Penelope Casas, Rosie Daley, Marcella Hazan, Nina Simonds, Andre Soltner, Anna Thomas, and many others.

In 1991 Knopf relaunched Everyman's Library, a series of classics of world literature in beautifully printed, affordable hardcover editions, originally published at the turn of the century in England. The series has grown over the years to hundreds of volumes, and now also includes lines of Children's Classics and Pocket Poets. Other Knopf series include the vastly successful National Audubon Society Field Guides; the bestselling National Audubon Society Sibley Guide to Birds (first in a series); and the Knopf Guides, illustrated culture and travel companions to worldwide destinations.

In 1960 Alfred A. Knopf became part of Random House, Inc., which is now the world's largest English-language trade book publisher. Random House is a division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the foremost global media companies.

The history of Alfred A. Knopf | About The Borzoi Reader Online | Knopf award winners | Articles from the original Borzoi Reader