Kurt Wolff: A Portrait in Essays and Letters - Hardcover

"The invaluable correspondence, intoxicating recollections, and, best of all, engaging voice of perhaps this century's most discriminating publisher."--New York Times Book Review

"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

"This beautifully designed, lovingly printed book is a bouillabaisse of memorabilia, containing historic-quality letters and poems and rich excerpts from published works. It provides a fine bouquet of examples of the cultural and literary delights Wolff's imprint guaranteed. . . . This is a highly personal, sentimental, enriching book and many admirers of Pantheon--with which Kurt Wolff was long associated--will find it meaningful and revealing. Sentimentalists will be pleased to find the famous Lou Andreas-Salomé here. And the special section entitled 'Adventures in Publishing' will offer a surprise with the appearance of James Joyce. As for the section headed 'On Luring Away Authors, ' it is virtually worth the price of the book to all editors."--Washington Post

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.