Knopf, Blanche

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KNOPF, BLANCHE

A leading U.S. publisher, Blanche Knopf (1894–1966) played a key role in twentieth century book publishing. By promoting books of controversial European authors, in English translation, and the books of U.S. minority groups (African American, Hispanic, and feminist authors), Blanche Knopf aggressively advocated a new cultural and intellectual climate for U.S. reading audiences, one that powerfully impacted, challenged, and changed their view of the world around them.

Born on July 20, 1894, in New York City, Blanche Wolf was an only child born to wealthy parents. As well as sending her to the elite Gardner School in New York, her parents provided the cultural and language training of her own French and German-speaking governesses.

Blanche grew up a keenly intelligent, aggressive, and demanding young woman, with high personal standards for intellectual excellence. At age twenty-two she married Alfred A. Knopf, whom she met at age seventeen and steadily dated thereafter. Alfred was a writer, editor, and a new publisher.

Together with her husband, Blanche Knopf founded and began building the publishing house Alfred A. Knopf Publishers, in 1915. By 1921, Blanche was director and vice president of the Knopf Publishing Corp.

Because she was perhaps the first woman of high position in a U.S. publishing firm, Blanche encountered sexism and personal censure in her professional life. She was openly denied membership to two powerful publisher's clubs—The Publisher's Lunch Club, and The Book Table, based on her sex. Despite certain closed doors, her flair for fluid social interaction, as well as a love for tough negotiating and strategic bargaining, proved great assets in difficult business situations. Without those personal qualities and her first-rate intelligence, she might have dismally failed in the highly competitive, male-dominated, publishing world of her day.

Blanche Knopf became one of the formidable publishers of her time, specializing in new material for the reading public. She sought out and discovered much new talent in Europe and Latin America and also began to publish the works of little known U.S. minority writers, like poet Langston Hughes and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. In publishing their works, Knopf provided a venue for many writers who had never before received much public attention. In doing so, she indirectly challenged contemporary U.S. thought.

Presenting to the public the words and ideas of African American and other minority writers, Knopf introduced a new world of expression to the literary mainstream—views of society by frequently suppressed minorities. She also introduced the new writings of Europeans in translated versions. Knopf introduced existentialism to the United States, publishing the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir. She also published other European giants such as Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, and the controversial psychiatrist, Dr. Sigmund Freud.

Publishing Simone de Beauvoir's work allowed Knopf to bring to U.S. readers one of the central works of mid-twentieth century feminism: The Second Sex. The book discussed the powerful and provocative issues of lesbianism, prostitution, and the nature of sex-role limitations, challenging the social conventions of the day.

Through her work Knopf assisted in the dissemination of ideas and issues that revolutionized thinking in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Her efforts were regarded as controversial and, at the same time, emancipating because many of the books that caused such calamity in social circles were released at a time when the public was most conspicuously conservative in its sentiments (the late 1940s and 1950s).

Knopf and her husband continued to publish the best of foreign-language and minority writing, and the best of U.S. literature throughout their careers. They prided themselves on publishing books that were physically well-made, colorful—always with the hope that each book would challenge the ideas and imaginations of readers.

Blanche Knopf died in New York City on June 4, 1966. She continued to work as an editor until her death, despite losing much of her eyesight in middle age. Although not able to read new manuscripts in later life, she had many of them read aloud to her and retained the final say on what books were to be published.