James Robert Tyrrell

James Robert Tyrrell (3 July 1875 – 30 July 1961) was an Australian bookseller, art dealer, publisher and author. He enjoyed a career of seven decades in the booktrade and was esteemed in his era as the "doyen of Sydney booksellers". He wrote a standard history of early bookselling in Australia entitled Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney.

Early life and career Tyrrell was born on 3 July 1875 in Darlington, New South Wales, an inner city suburb of Sydney. His father, George, was born in England and, after serving in the Crimean War, migrated to New South Wales to try his luck on the goldfields. His mother, Mary, née Colgan, was born in Ireland and migrated to Queensland.

He attended school in Balmain and Petersham, and earned pocket money by selling newspapers at Petersham station for the N.S.W. Bookstall Company. At the age of 15, he began to work for the Sydney bookselling firm, Angus and Robertson. His duties in those days included running errands, delivering books and keeping an eye on the books displayed outside the shop. He was working 64 hours a week for which received 7/6 [7 shillings and 6 pence]. George Robertson, one of the proprietors of Angus and Robertson, encouraged Tyrrell to learn and suggested a reading programme for him. As Tyrrell gained experience and knowledge of books and bookselling, he set up a small shop (with Robertson's encouragement) which sold books at night near Sydney University. Robertson also permitted him to build his personal library by choosing from Angus and Robertson's discards.

When Angus and Robertson moved to Castlereagh Street, Tyrrell was able to meet and converse with the many writers, artists and collectors who gathered there.

In 1897-98 Tyrrell, who was by then an Australiana expert, became Angus and Robertson's chief buyer in London and Edinburgh. started his own bookselling business known as Tyrrell's Bookshop at the corner of Castlereagh and Market Streets. in 1910 he moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where he started a business known as Tyrrell's Ltd., Australian poet, novelist and journalist Zora Cross and the cartoonist David Low. One of the books published by Tyrrell in 1914 was Sydney Ure Smith's Relics of Old Colonial Days: A Book of Drawings (a limited edition of 500 copies, which are now sought after items).

Tyrrell was fascinated in collectable items. He purchased the "established Hunter Street business, Antiques Ltd." He purchased the vast photographic archive of Kerry & Co., "Sydney's largest photographic studio of the late 1800s and early 1900s." Tyrrell named his purchase The Tyrrell Collection and originally intended it to be displayed in a private museum of ethnography. In 1980, after this plan did not come to fruition, the collection finally passed to the Australian Consolidated Press, which in turn donated many of the images to major Australian museums and libraries, such as the Powerhouse Museum and the National Library of Australia.

Reception Literary figures would often gather in Tyrrell's shops, which acted as stimulating cultural centres. For example, the roomy Castlereagh bookshop:

became "a veritable treasurehouse" ... where artists, writers and collectors met to browse, to bargain, or just talk. It was crammed with paintings, prints, china, bronze, jade, ivories, coins, medals, and, of course, books. Kenneth Slessor's "In Tyrrell's Bookshop", and Roderic Quinn's "Tyrrell's Bookshop". One of James's brothers, George, was a secondhand bookseller in lower William Street, Sydney.

He died in Cammeray, Sydney on 30 July 1961.

After his death Tyrrell's Bookshop was managed by his son John and his grandson William ("Bill"). In 1971 it moved to 328 Pacific Highway, Crows Nest.

Select bibliography James R. Tyrrell, The Growth of a City: Sydney Old and New, a Contrast: 48 Comparative Views of the Growth of Sydney (Sydney: J. R. Tyrrell, 1914) James R. Tyrrell, Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1952) James R. Tyrrell, Postscript: Further Bookselling Reminiscences by James Tyrrell Together with the Poems of James Lionel Murphy as transcribed by Henry Kendall (Sydney: Tyrrells, 1957) James R. Tyrrell, Australian Aboriginal Place-names and Their Meanings (Sydney: Simmons, 1933) James R. Tyrrell, David Scott Mitchell: A Reminiscence (Sydney: Sunnybrook Press, 1936)