Frank H. Vizetelly

Francis Horace Vizetelly (2 April 1864 – 20 December 1938) was an English-American lexicographer, etymologist, and editor.

Life

Vizetelly was born in England, United Kingdom, the only son of Henry Vizetelly and his second wife, Elizabeth Anne Ansell. His half-brother was Ernest Alfred Vizetelly (1853–1922). After an education in France and England, he joined his father's publishing house in 1882; the firm and his father were eventually ruined by convictions for obscenity resulting from the publication of the novels of Émile Zola.

He moved to New York in 1891, eventually becoming naturalized as a citizen of the United States. The publishers Funk & Wagnalls employed him along with Calvin Thomas, beginning on the Isaac K. Funk's editorial staff compiling A Standard Dictionary of the English Language. He continued to act as an editor for the firm's dictionaries and encyclopedia, and had a column in their Literary Digest known as "The Lexicographer's Easy Chair."

He died in 1938, being interred at New York's Woodlawn Cemetery.