Funk & Wagnalls

Think of "Abercrombie" and your mind will echo "Fitch," "Montgomery" calls up "Ward." Other familiar name-links are Hart, Schaffner & Marx; Weber & Heilbroner; Gallagher & Shean; Sears, Roebuck; Acker, Merrall & Condit; Black, Starr & Frost; Doubleday, Page.

Also there is Funk & Wagnalls Co., publishers of The Literary Digest, The International Book Review, and The Standard Dictionary. Twelve years ago, Dr. Isaac K. Funk, senior partner, died. Last week, Adam Willis Wagnalls died.

Adam Willis Wagnalls was born 81 years ago in Lithopolis, Ohio. Aged 24, he founded and was pastor of the First English Lutheran Church of Kansas City. After two years as clergyman, he served two in Atchison, Kan., as City Clerk; then went to Manhattan to enter the publishing business of Isaac Funk, a fellow alumnus of Wittenberg College (Springfield, Ohio).

In 1878, Wagnalls became a partner of Funk & Co. They published books only, at that time--chiefly reprints of English and Continental authors. The Standard Dictionary first appeared in 1885, edited by Dr. Funk. Dr. Funk was a prohibitionist and his Voice (1880), an organ of the Prohibition Party, reached a circulation of 700,000 in the campaign [Cleveland vs. Harrison vs. Fisk (Pro.)] of 1888. The firm became Funk & Wagnalls Co. in 1891, having established the Literary Digest in 1889. Beside the bulky, bound volumes of that weekly, which constitute an exhaustive compendium of the press opinions of the world on all public questions in the last three decades, the partners have been responsible for The Jewish Encyclopedia (12 vols., 1901-06), Schaff-Hertzog's Encyclopedia of Re ligious Knowledge, Hoyt's Cyclopedia of Quotations, Cyclopedia of Classified Dates and other monumental works. Dr. Funk's guiding passion was for undertakings on a big scale with a special penchant for lexicography. When he died, he had just completed the manuscript for The New Standard Dictionary. Adam Willis Wagnalls found his forte in the financial rather than in the editorial side of the business. He remained active in the firm until a few months ago, when his health failed.