Funk & Wagnalls Company

Funk & Wagnalls

Logo of Funk and Wagnalls from a 1922 edition of Hoyt's Cyclopedia of Quotations
Status	Defunct
Founded	1875
Founder	Isaac Kaufmann Funk
Successor	World Book
Country of origin	United States
Key people	George Alfred Hartley - Key financial contributor
Publication types	Books

Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1st ed. 1894), and the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia (25 volumes, 1st ed. 1912).

The encyclopedia was renamed to Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Encyclopedia in 1931 and was later known as New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, Universal Standard Encyclopedia, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopedia, and Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (29 volumes, 1st ed. 1971).

The last printing of Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia was in 1997.

The I.K. Funk & Company, founded in 1875, was renamed to Funk & Wagnalls Company after two years, and later became Funk & Wagnalls Inc., then Funk & Wagnalls Corporation.

Isaac Kaufmann Funk founded the business in 1875 as I.K. Funk & Company. In 1877, Adam Willis Wagnalls, one of Funk's classmates at Wittenberg College (now Wittenberg University), joined the firm as a partner and the name of the firm was changed to Funk & Wagnalls Company.

During its early years, Funk & Wagnalls Company published religious books. The publication of The Literary Digest in 1890 marked a shift to publishing of general reference dictionaries and encyclopedias. The firm published The Standard Dictionary of the English Language ^{(OCLC 19715240)} in 1894 and Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia ^{(OCLC 1802064)} in 1912.

In 1913, the New Standard Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language was published under the supervision of Isaac K. Funk (Editor -in-Chief). The New Standard Unabridged Dictionary was revised up to 1943, a later edition that was also supervised by Charles Earl Funk.

The encyclopedia was based upon Chambers's Encyclopaedia: "Especially are we indebted to the famous Chambers's Encyclopaedia...With its publishers we have arranged to draw upon its stores as freely as we have found it of advantage so to do."