Harrap

About Harrap

Harrap (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd) was a London publisher of educational and speciality books, active from about 1901, remembered by collectors for illustrated gift books and as the UK publisher of Winston Churchill's Marlborough.

The firm took its name from George G. Harrap, whose memoir Some Memories, 1901 to 1935 traces its history from 1901. Many of its books were educational, and its long-running lists included Harrap's Bilingual Series, Harrap's Modern English Series, Harrap's Shilling Library and Harrap's Standard Fiction Library. Its imprint read "London, Bombay" on many books.

For collectors, Harrap is chiefly associated with finely illustrated books, notably those by Arthur Rackham, and with Churchill. Harrap paid a 10,000 pound advance in 1929 for the British rights to Marlborough: His Life and Times, which it issued in four volumes in 1933, 1934, 1936 and 1938; Scribner's held the American rights. The firm also kept children's titles such as The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone in print for decades.

Harrap was later absorbed into Chambers Harrap, the Edinburgh reference publisher owned by the French group CEP; sources disagree on whether this happened in 1986 or 1992. Ownership then passed through Havas (1997), Vivendi (1998) and, from 2002, Lagardère. The Edinburgh office closed in September 2009, with the Harrap's list to be run directly by Hachette Larousse in Paris.