Funk & Wagnalls

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Funk & Wagnalls is a publisher based in New York City known for their reference works, including an encyclopedia, content from which became a part of Microsoft's Encarta digital encyclopedia.

History

Isaac Kaufmann Funk founded the business in 1876 as I.K. Funk & Company. The firm's first publication was the Metropolitan Pulpit. In 1877, Adam Willis Wagnalls, one of Funk's classmates at Wittenberg College, now Wittenberg University, joined the firm as a partner. The two changed the name of the firm to Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1890.

Prior to 1890, F. & W. published only religious-oriented works. The publication of The Literary Digest in 1890 marked a change for the firm to a publisher of general reference dictionaries and encyclopedias. The firm followed in 1894 with its most memorable publication, The Standard Dictionary of the English Language ⁽⁾. 1912 saw the publication of the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia ⁽⁾.

In 1953, the firm began to sell its reference publications through a supermarket continuity marketing campaign, encouraging consumers to include the latest volume of the encyclopedia on their shopping lists.

In 1965, the company, known as Funk & Wagnalls, Inc., was bought by Reader's Digest Association. By 1971, it had been sold again to the firm Dun & Bradstreet. In subsequent years, the publication rights to the company's reference works (aside from the encyclopedia) were acquired by other firms. The publication rights to the encyclopedia were spun off by Dun & Bradstreet in 1983, and were bought up once more in 1990 by K-III Holdings Inc.

In 1984, Dun & Bradstreet sold Funk & Wagnalls to a group of Funk & Wagnalls executives.

In 1988, the company was purchased by Field Publications, a division of the Field Corporation.

In 1998, as part of the Information division of Primedia Inc. (renamed K-III Holdings), Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia became the web site "funkandwagnalls.com". This short-lived venture was shut down in 2001. The encyclopedia exists today only as Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, an electronic reference provided to educational institutions by the World Almanac Education Group.

Funk & Wagnalls is now part of Weekly Reader, a Reader's Digest Company.

Some content from the encyclopedia became a part of Microsoft's Encarta digital encyclopedia.

Popular culture

In the 1960s, Funk and Wagnalls became part of one of the iconic jokes on the ground-breaking show Laugh-In, where a frequently-made reference was "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls", a play on the perceived profanity when speaking the word "funk".

Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent sketches always made reference to the question being hidden from Carnac as "locked in a mayonnaise jar outside Funk & Wagnalls' doorstep".

In the South Park episode "Cancelled", Cartman asks: "What the Funk & Wagnalls are you talkin' about?"

Publications

• 1890 – The Literary Digest
• 1894 – The Standard Dictionary of the English Language
• 1912 – Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia
• 1927 – ''The World's One Hundred Best Short Stories (Ten Volumes)
• 1949 – Funk & Wagnalls standard handbook of synonyms, antonyms, and prepositions
• 1949 – Funk & Wagnalls standard dictionary of folklore, mythology and legend
• 1958 – Standard Dictionary of the English Language (International Edition)
• 1962 – Poetry handbook; a dictionary of terms
• 1973 – Funk & Wagnalls Guide to modern world literature
• 1983 – Funk & Wagnalls new encyclopedia
• 1996 – Funk & Wagnalls new world encyclopedia (electronic database)
• 1996 – Funk & Wagnalls world atlas

References

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Last updated on Thursday March 06, 2008 at 07:59:34 PST (GMT -0800)
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