Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk, a Lutheran minister who in 1876 began editing and publishing tow magazines, the Homiletic Review and the Voice, the latter for the Prohibition Party. Unfortunately, neither magazine paid its way. The following year he teamed with A.W. Wagnalls, a lawyer and accountant, who got Funk on sounder financial footing.

They began by publishing pamphlets and booklets for the clergy, mostly commentaries on the Bible. For more general audiences, they issued a reprint of Spurgeon's The Treasury of David, in seven volumes, issued by subscripiton one at a time for $1.00 each. The success of this led to the more ambitious 27 volume set of Dr. Joseph Parker's People's Bible, also sold by subscription one at a time. This in turn led to the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge by Schaff-Herzogg.

The big break for the two men came in 1884 when Funk, watching the explosion of the so-called Second Paperback Revolution, thought there might be a market for religious paperbacks. he issued the "Standard Series", quarto-sized soft bound books.

The first was John Ploughman's Talks by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Next came Imitation of Christ, followed by Carlyle's Essays and Macaulay's Essays.

In 1886, Funk switched the size to 12 mo to give his series a more distinctive look. At the same time, he aggressively marketed the series as a subscription service; for $4.00 a year, a subscriber would receive a book every foru weeks. He sold over 16,000 subscriptions without knowing what titles he would include in the series.

In 1888, Funk began publishing the annual "Missionary Review of the World".

He founded a new magazine, "The Literary Digest", one of the the most important magazines of the early 20th century and the fore-runner of Time Magazine.

But Funk and Wagnalls really made its name with reference works which were merely a secular extension of their work in religious reference books. The most famous of these was the "Standard Dictionary".

They also issued a limited number of fiction titles, the best known of these being the Samantha series by "Josiah Allen's Wife".

They purchased Cassell in 1933.

Funk died in 1912 and the house eventually became a subsidiary of Thomas Y Crowell Co.

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Rector K. Fox, brother of successful novelist John Fox, Jr., was an editor with R.H. Russell Publishing when he teamed with Pitts Duffield of Scribner's to firm this company.

First book: The Autobiography of a Thief and Everyman, morality play with wood-cut illustrations.

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