Corporate body

Funk & Wagnalls

1877-1965

Funk & Wagnalls was an American publishing company. In 1875, Isaac Kaufmann Funk (1839-1912) founded the business as I.K. Funk & Company. In 1877, Adam Willis Wagnalls (1843-1924), Funk's classmate at Wittenberg College, Ohio, joined the firm as a partner and the name of the firm changed to Funk & Wagnalls Company. During its early years, the company published religious books. The publication of The Literary Digest in 1890 marked a shift to the publishing of general reference dictionaries and encyclopedias. In 1965, Funk & Wagnalls Co. was sold to Reader's Digest. In 1971, the company, now Funk and Wagnalls, Inc., was sold to Dun & Bradstreet. In 1984, Dun & Bradstreet sold Funk & Wagnalls, Inc., to a group of Funk & Wagnalls executives, who sold it to Field Corporation in 1988. In 1991, the company was sold to K-III Holdings, Inc., and in 1993, Funk & Wagnalls Corporation acquired the World Almanac. In 1998, as part of the Information division of Primedia Inc. (the renamed K-III), the encyclopedia content appeared on the Web site "funkandwagnalls.com" but was shut down in 2001. Ripplewood Holdings bought Primedia's education division in 1999, which became part of Reader's Digest Association in 2007. In 2009, Funk & Wagnalls was acquired by World Book Encyclopedia.