She traveled the world seeking new authors and was especially influential in the publication of European and Latin American literature in the United States.

[2] After coming to America, he co-owned a millinery business (which he divested before it went bankrupt), and later, he owned the second-largest children's hat company in the country.

She is credited with recruiting Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus, André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Ilya Ehrenburg, Mikhail Sholokhov, Thomas Mann, and Gilberto Freyre, striking deals to publish translations of their works in the United States.

[2][10] In 1936, Knopf returned from Europe concerned about the plight of German publishers and authors driven out of Germany because of Nazi persecution.

[12] Knopf also worked closely with many American writers, including John Updike, Carl Van Vechten, Willa Cather, H.L.

[13] Knopf helped Carl Van Vechten launch writers of the Harlem Renaissance, among whom were Langston Hughes and Nella Larson.

[9] According to her biography by Laura Claridge, Knopf "legitimized the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction" with authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

"[9] Knopf was also responsible for acquiring William Shirer's Berlin Diary, John Hersey's Hiroshima and works by Edward R.

[7] She is the subject of a 2016 biography by Laura Claridge entitled The Lady with the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker Extraordinaire.