Alfred Abraham Knopf Sr. (September 12, 1892 – August 11, 1984) was an American publisher of the 20th century, and co-founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and (of the previous generation) Frank Nelson Doubleday, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt.

Knopf paid special attention to the quality of printing, binding, and design in his books, and earned a reputation as a purist in both content and presentation.

His father, Samuel Knopf, was an advertising executive and financial consultant, and his mother was Ida Japhe, a school teacher.

[2] Samuel Knopf was originally from Warsaw, Poland, but came to New York with his parents, where he worked his way up the directorship at a small mercantile bank.

With Lillian, Samuel had another son, Edwin H. Knopf, who worked for Alfred briefly, then became a film director and producer.

At that time European literature was largely neglected by American publishers; Knopf published authors such as Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Sigmund Freud, André Gide, Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, W. Somerset Maugham, T. F. Powys, Wyndham Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Mencken, George Jean Nathan, John Updike, and Knopf's own favorite, Willa Cather.

Knopf's personal interest in the fields of history, sociology, and science led to close friendships in the academic community with such noted historians as Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Samuel Eliot Morison.

Knopf retained complete editorial control for five years, and then gave up only his right to veto other editors' manuscript selections.

Random House itself eventually became a division of Bertelsmann AG, a large multinational media company.

In Publishing Then and Now he wrote: "Frequently... our American author, whatever his age, experience in life, and technical knowledge, simply can't write.

Among other authors he rejected were Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Anne Frank, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anaïs Nin.

[11] Knopf also lamented the "shockingly bad taste" that he felt characterizes much modern fiction, and warned of the danger of a "legal backlash" against pornography, and a possible revival of censorship.

This outspoken aspect of his character sometimes found voice in letters of complaint to hotels, restaurants, and stores that failed to meet his high standards.

One striking example is the six-year-long war of words he waged against the Eastman Kodak Company over a roll of lost film.