Editor-turned-literary agent Knox Burger died 4 January 2010. Knox Breckenridge Burger was born in New York City on 1 November 1922. His father, Carl Burger, was a children’s book illustrator.
Knox Burger graduated from Cornell, where he edited the campus humor magazine. He served in the US Army during World War II, and wrote for Yank, a weekly magazine published by the military for overseas troops.
Returning from service, he went into editing, and was the fiction editor of Collier’s from 1948 to 1951. At Collier’s, he received a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (the two had attended Cornell together). After Vonnegut modified the story to Burger’s suggestions, it beccame his first published piece of fiction, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”, which appeared in the February 1950 issue of Collier’s. Later, writing about it in The Paris Review, Vonnegut wrote “And let it be put on the record here that Knox Burger, who is about my age, discovered and encouraged more good young writers than any other editor of his time. I don’t think that’s ever been written down anywhere. It’s a fact known only to writers, and one that could easily vanish, if it isn’t somewhere written down.” Vonnegut dedicated his 1968 collection Welcome to the Monkey House to Burger, writing “To Knox Burger. Ten days older than I am. He has been a very good father to me.”
After Collier’s, Burger moved on to book editing, working for Dell and then Fawcett. In 1970, he moved to the other side of the desk, established Knox Burger & Associates literary agency, with his wife, Kitty.
Burger was most closely associated with mystery and suspense writing.
Burger’s first marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Katharine “Kitty” Sprague, died in 2007. He is survived by two daughters, two stepsons, two granddaughters, and two stepgranddaughters.