AustLit

Journeyman printers Alfred Mason and Richard James Firth, who had worked for the Argus following their migration from Britain in 1850, began a printing business in Flinders Lane West in Melbourne as Mason & Firth in about 1856. In 1871 John M'Cutcheon joined them and the firm became Mason, Firth & M'Cutcheon. Robert M'Cutcheon replaced his brother John in 1876, and by 1878 was sole proprietor.

Mason, Firth & M'Cutcheon became a large printing and lithography firm, printing and publishing a number of religious journals, such as the Australian Messenger, the Melbourne Church of England Messenger, the Temperance Times, and the Christian Reformer. It also published library and exhibition catalogues, guidebooks, handbooks, almanacs and histories. In 1871 the firm printed Marcus Clarke's Old Tales of a New Country.

The business moved to Bank Place in 1904. Robert M'Cutcheon's sons I. T. and O. H. M'Cutcheon took over the firm, which was still operating after the Second World War, as a subsidiary of Australian Consolidated Industries.