Thomas William Lyster


Thomas William Lyster was director of the National Library of Ireland in Dublin between 1895 and his retirement in 1920.
Lyster joined the library in 1878 and was appointed as its director in 1895. He was also a scholar who translated Düntzer’s Life of Goethe in 1883 and edited a poetry schoolbook, the Intermediate School Anthology.
Although a member of the Church of Ireland, he was used by James Joyce as the model for a "quaker librarian" in his novel Ulysses. An whimsical account of him is given in Oliver St John Gogarty's As I was Going down Sackville Street when Gogarty visits the national library. In this book Lyster is very solicitous of the various needs of the readers in the library.

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