Knox Burger Archive
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Abstract
Knox Burger was an editor, writer and journalist based in New York City. While serving in World War II, Burger contributed to Yank, and then after the war to such publications as Collier's. He then moved on to editing for Dell and Fawcett Publications. In 1970, he founded Knox Burger and Associates, a literary agency which later merged with the Harold Ober agency. The collection consists of Burger's correspondence from the late 1960's through 2000.
Biographical Note:
In college, Burger was the editor of the Cornell Widow from the fall of 1942 to spring 1943. He left college in April 1943 to join the army. In the service, he contributed freelance reportage, fiction and humor to Yank, the Army Weekly. While serving with a B-29 bomb squadron in the Marianas, he covered a number of missions over Japan, and was transferred to the Yank Saipan bureau late in the summer of 1945, just before the Japanese surrender. Burger moved north to Tokyo, where he was, for a few months, the editor of the Far East edition of Yank, and wrote numerous stories about the occupation.
After the war, Burger did a brief stint at the Harvard graduate school, selling occasional fiction and articles to national magazines. In 1947, he was hired by Collier's (one of our leading defunct magazines), and became its fiction editor in 1948. In 1951, he left Collier's to edit books - mostly suspense novels - for Dell. Burger edited at Dell for 9 years, and spent 1960-1970 editing for Fawcett Publications. Among the writers he worked with during those 20 years were Kurt Vonnegut, John D. MacDonald, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, Horace McCoy, Walter Tevis, MacKinlay Kantor, Morris West and Louis L'Amour.
In 1970 Burger established, in partnership with his wife, Kitty Sprague, a literary agency (Knox Burger Associates), setting up in the basement of the brownstone on Washington Square in which they lived. In the spring of 2000, he merged his agency with the Harold Ober agency.
Knox Burger died in Manhattan on January 4, 2010.
Source - from a text written for Fales by Knox Burger
Arrangement
Folders are arranged alphabetically by subject/author.
Scope and Content Note
The Knox Burger Archive is comprised of Burger's correspondence with and manuscripts of many notable literary figures, as well as contracts and reviews of their works. Burger's original organization of his papers was preserved as much as possible.
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Access Restrictions
Materials are open without restrictions.
Use Restrictions
This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date (if known); The Knox Burger Archive; MSS 078; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
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Provenance
The Knox Burger Archive was donated to the Fales Library by Knox Burger in 2000.