Kurt Wolff

A Portrait in Essays and Letters

Wolff Kurt

Kurt Wolff (1887-1963) was a singular presence in the literary world of the twentieth century, a cultural force shaping modern literature itself and pioneering significant changes in publishing. During an intense, active career that spanned two continents and five decades, Wolff launched seven publishing houses and nurtured an extraordinary array of writers, among them Franz Kafka, Lou Andreas-Salome, Boris Pasternak, Gunter Grass, Robert Musil, Paul Valery, Julian Green, Lampedusa, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

About the Author

Michael Ermarth is professor of history at Dartmouth College. Deborah Lucas Schneider is a prolific translator whose other projects have included "Caligula: A Biography", by Aloys Winterling, and "Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science", by Hans Belting.

Reviews

"Pure oxygen and nutrition for exhausted and demoralized editors and publishers. One of the prophetic publishers of the century... Kurt Wolff instances in these modest reminiscences and correspondence with authors (Kafka, Werfel, Kraus, Rilke, Mann, Pasternak, Grass, et al. ) the vision and devotion that bound them to him and that made him – the secret of his calling – 'synonymous with his work'" – Nation

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