"A New Britain Phrase Book" - Papua New Guinea imprint from the Malakuna Mission Press - Rabaul 1920

"A New Britain Phrase Book"

-By J. H. L. Waterhouse

-Printed and published at the Mission Press Malakuna, Rabaul 

-1920 - Printed in New Britain (Papua New Guinea)

-Octavo format. Original publisher’s brown wrappers

-Complete: [2], ii, 26pp, with blank interleaving throughout

-Very good condition. With the cancelled inkstamp of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the bookplate of the noted Pacific scholar John Lawson.

This is a rare mission press imprint from New Britain, printed at the Methodist Mission Press at Malakuna, near Rabaul, in 1920.

The work was compiled by John Henry Lawry Waterhouse, a Methodist missionary active in New Britain during the early twentieth century. Stationed at Malakuna near Rabaul, Waterhouse was closely involved in the study and documentation of indigenous Melanesian languages and later produced the important Roviana and English Dictionary (1928).  The present phrase book was intended to facilitate communication between missionaries and the peoples of the Bismarck Archipelago during the early years of Australian administration after WW1.

The phrase book records the Kuanua (Tolai) language, one of the principal indigenous languages of the Gazelle Peninsula and the region surrounding Rabaul. 

OCLC records only 10 institutional holdings.