Captain W.G. Shellabear is recognized as the founder of MPH. In 1890, he established the Amelia Bishop Press in Singapore, publishing Christian literature. The company eventually began publishing secular works as well, changing its name to the American Mission Press in 1893.

The Book Room was also established to sell Mission Press publications, textbooks and other supplies to Mission schools.

In the 1900s, Rev. William T. Cherry expanded the organization’s activities to printing, publishing, bookselling, and book distribution. He changed the company’s name to Methodist Publishing House in 1906, giving rise to the acronym ‘MPH’, as the company is known today.

The company also changed ownership multiple times, being acquired by an Indonesian consortium in 1966, then a Hong Kong group, Jack Chia-MPH, in 1972 and finally by Singaporean entrepreneur Simon Cheong in 1999. In 2002, Jalinan Inspirasi Sdn Bhd, acquired the company. This was the first time MPH became a wholly Malaysian-owned company.

In early 2019 MPH had 29 bookstores in Malaysia and three in Singapore. MPH expanded into online book retail through its website MPHOnline.com in 2000. By 2020, due to the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, many stores had to close, now the CEO of MPH also announced that they will now focus on selling books on e-commerce platforms.

Today, MPH Group is the parent company that owns MPH Bookstore (Malaysia), MPH Distributor (Malaysia & Singapore), MPH Group Publishing House (Malaysia) and MPH Library Services (Singapore).

According to Wikipedia, mphonline.com