Knopf, along with Blanche Knopf, founded the publishing house Alfred A. Knopf in 1915. The company initially emphasized European, especially Russian, literature, hence the choice of the borzoi as a colophon. 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. While Blanche was known to as a superb editor, Alfred was always interested in more of the sales side than in editing.