As is the case with many men and women who have given their names to companies, few people now know who the first Mr Harrap was. He was in fact one George Godfrey Harrap and was born in 1867 in London. Indeed, he claims to have been born "within the sound of Bow bells", making him a genuine Cockney. George Harrap worked in publishing for 19 years with Isbister & Co, the English agents for the American Heath range of educational books.
Even though Dickens had died 40 years earlier, it is hard not to imagine the House of Harrap (as it was then referred to) as itself the subject of a Dickens novel with the well-meaning but slightly eccentric George presiding over his empire, supported by his sons George Jnr and Walter (who both joined the company before the First World War) and a rapidly growing staff that included a one-eyed accountant and a woman editor who won a silver medal for her poems in the International Library Contest connected to the 1924 Paris Olympics.
In 1901, however, he decided to strike out on his own and set up his own company. He was aware that setting up a publishing house was a hazardous venture, and in his memoirs he says "Can there be anything more uncertain than the fate of new books?".
George's first office was at 15 York Street in the heart of Covent Garden market. He had two rooms above a florist's that he shared with his staff: a clerk and a stockman.
Walter Harrap served in Belgium and Mesopotamia during World War I but returned to the company in 1921 in time for its move the following year to still larger offices (originally built for the newspapers the Pall Mall Gazette and the Observer) at 39/41 Parker Street, Kingsway. George now began to expand his list and was especially proud to publish Winston Churchill's biography of Lord Marlborough. Churchill remained an honoured friend until the end of George's life.
George Harrap had a passionate belief that although an educational book is a functional object, it is still a book and as such should be as attractive to read as possible. He saw it as his goal to produce "educational books that looked as little like textbooks as possible" and to strive for "typographical excellence".
As his business prospered, he had to expand, first across the road to 2 York Street and then in 1910 to larger premises in Portsmouth Street. This office was opposite the shop that Charles Dickens had used as a basis for his novel The Old Curiosity Shop.
Other notable authors included Mussolini (!) and Clemenceau who at that time was living in near poverty. George paid him £4000 for his memoirs and Clemenceau is said to have replied "Now I shall be able to eat chicken".
In 1932 Churchill was present at the party to celebrate the company's last move within George's lifetime (he died in 1938) - to 182 High Holborn - and delivered a typically stirring speech, ending by wishing "the House of Harrap all good fortune and prosperity in the future, and that this building, now inaugurated, may long prove a centre of learning and culture and a fountain spring of wise information to be spread abroad by the medium of books through all the quarters of our land".
A lofty ideal to live up to, but one perhaps attained by the French Standard and Shorter Dictionaries, the stories of which will be told in a forthcoming article.
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