Harrap, George Godfrey (1868-1938) was born on 18 January 1868 at 11 Woodville Grove, Islington, London. He developed a particular interest in the educational publications of D. C. Heath & Co. of Boston, Massachusetts, for whom Isbister were the London agents, and a personal friendship with Heath himself followed. This association enabled him to introduce Heath's books to English teachers. It was at about this time that Harrap also became London representative for the publishing house of Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.
In 1901 Harrap started his own publishing business, concentrating at first on the production of modern language and other textbooks. The firm that subsequently bore his name, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, came formally into being in 1905, when Harrap brought G. Oliver Anderson into partnership.Harrap retired from his now flourishing publishing business in 1935, leaving an account of his venture in an autobiographical account, Some Memories, 1901-1935.
George Harrap died on 29 October 1938. The publishing house founded by him was directed by the Harrap and Anderson families until 1971. Harrap's second son, Walter Godfrey Harrap (1894-1967), joined his father's business in 1913 and became the firm's managing director in 1950. His grandson, Paull Harrap (1917-1985), son of George's eldest son, George Steward Harrap, entered the family business in 1936 and became its chairman in 1971, on the retirement of Olaf Anderson. (Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
