Funk, Isaac K.

Funk, Isaac K. (Kauffman) (1839–1912) lexicographer, publisher; born in Clifton, Ohio. Serving as a Lutheran minister from 1861 to 1872, he resigned to travel and returned to editorial work for the Christian Radical. In 1876 he started his own business in New York, supplying materials and books to ministers. He was joined in 1877 by A. W. Wagnalls. The company, later renamed the Funk & Wagnalls Company (1891), published the Homiletic Review and various religious and secular reference works. In the 1880s Funk published the Voice, an influential temperance periodical, and in 1890 he founded the Literary Digest. He planned, supervised, and served as editor-in-chief of the noteworthy unabridged dictionary, Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1893), and of the New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1913), which he had nearly completed before his death.