Originality has been a powerful factor in the career of the noted
clergyman, editor and publisher, the Rev. Dr. Isaac Kauffman Funk.
He was born at Clifton, Greene county, Ohio, September 10, 1839. His
parents, John and Martha (Kauffman) Funk, were descendants of early
Holland-Swiss emigrants to Pennsylvania. Graduating from Whittenberg
college, Springfield, Ohio, with the degree of D.D., he from this
same institution, in 1896, received the degree of LL.D. From 1861 to
1872 he was engaged in active work in the Lutheran ministry. At the
end of that time he resigned his pastorate and traveled extensively
in Europe, Egypt and Palestine. Upon returning to America he became
associate editor of the Christian Radical. In 1876 he founded and
published in New York city the Metropolitan Pulpit, now the Homiletic
Review, acting as its editor-in-chief. His former college classmate,
Adam W. Wagnalls, a lawyer of Atchison, Kansas, became in 1877 his
partner, and the firm name was changed to I. K. Funk & Co., and later,
in 1891, to Funk & Wagnalls Co. Their several branch houses in Canada
and England, as well as their many published books which have met with
public favor, testified to the business successes of the members of the
concern. Dr. Funk is the founder of some well-known periodicals, among
which The Voice, The Literary Digest and The Missionary Review are the
most important. He also published a standard dictionary of the English
language, of which he was editor-in-chief. The production of this work
was a gigantic undertaking, costing nearly one million dollars.