Knopf, Alfred, Jr. (1918-2009) (“Pat”). Publisher; son of Alfred and Blanche Knopf. Born in White Plains, NY, “Pat” was the only child of Alfred and Blanche Knopf. Preoccupied with the publishing business of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., they left him to be cared for by nannies and sent him to Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding school in New Hampshire. Willa Cather was very fond of him and corresponded with him about his reading and education. When he failed to gain entrance to Princeton University, he ran away with only $15 in his pocket, and his parents found him in Salt Lake City, UT. Alfred Knopf shared this story, otherwise treated as a deep family secret, with Cather. Pat subsequently enrolled in Union College in Schenectady, NY. He wrote asking Cather about the structure of The Professor’s House (1925), and she permitted Burgess Johnson, Pat’s English professor at Union, to publish her remarks as “When I wrote The Professor’s House” in the College English Association newsletter (1938). Pat’s studies were interrupted when he was called up for military service in 1941; he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Awarded his BA in 1943 he joined the family business, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1946 as company secretary and trade books manager, subsequently becoming vice president of sales and establishing the Vintage Books paperback imprint. He cofounded the Atheneum imprint in 1960 and retired as a senior vice-president of Macmillan in 1988.

Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and One of Ours (1922), partly because she was dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an important personal friendship.