Alfred A. Knopf Sr.

United States. Knopf founded his firm in New York in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Knopf, who was an equal partner and a formidable editor, and built it on translated European literature and well-designed books marked by the borzoi colophon. Knopf published Thomas Mann, Willa Cather and Langston Hughes. They sold to Random House in 1960 on terms that kept the imprint's identity, which it still has.