Make What I Can Sell: The Story of Jack Chia-MPH (1st ed)

S$80.00

Make What I Can Sell: The Story of Jack Chia-MPH (1st ed)

S$80.00

A lovely, out-of-print first edition of the history of MPH.

Title: Make What I Can Sell: The Story of Jack Chia-MPH

Author: Peter Hutton

Publisher: Jack Chia-MPH, Singapore, 1978. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Very good. Foxing to top edge, very slight wear to top of dust jacket. 128pp., with many black-and-white photographs. App 10″ by 7″.

From jacket flap:

MPH has been a household name in Singapore and Malaysia for so long that many people have forgotten what the initials stood for – though at one time the company was simply known as MPH. But before that, it had been the Malaysia Publishing House; before that, the Malaya Publishing House; and before that, the Methodist Publishing House. Earlier still it had existed as the American Mission Press, and for three years from 1890 as the Amelia Bishop Press. There had in fact been mission presses in Singapore from about 1820 and in Malacca from 1815, which is where this story begins.

Make what I can sell: the story of Jack Chia-MPH covers more than one hundred and fifty years of printing and publishing activity. Here you will meet such talented men as William Shellabear, the army officer who became a missionary; William Cherry, the mission printer who was also a consummate businessman; Frank Sands, whose half a century in Singapore involved him deeply in both publishing and Scouting; Jack Chia, the industrial entrepreneur with a penchant for surprises, who rescued MPH at a time when the cynics thought it had breathed its last.