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 Burges 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, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in 1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.

Crofts, Freeman Wills (1879-1957). Irish author. Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin, Ireland, and educated privately through most of his early life before eventually attending Campbell College and Methodist College in Belfast. In 1897 he began working as a civil engineer for the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway, and he continued to work as a railroad engineer until 1929. In 1919 Crofts published his first novel, The Cask, and over the following decades he enjoyed a successful career writing detective novels and short stories, many featuring his character Inspector French of Scotland Yard.