Life
1855-1922 [Thomas William Lyster; T. W. Lyster]; bapt. Church of Ireland; joined National Library, 1878; appt. director of National Library, 1895; trans. Dunster’s Life of Goethe (1883); retired 1920; editor of
the Intermediate School Anthology studied by James Joyce and others, and incl. an annotated copy of the poem “Mesgadra” by Sir Samuel Ferguson.
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Commentary
C. P. Curran, James Joyce Remembered (1974), writes: ‘I have met none of my contemporaries who does not recall with pleasure that admirable anthology prepared by the librarian of the National Library who as such was later to be our counsellor and friend. It is a fair guess that it was his reading of Goldsmith in Lyster that put the schoolboy to work on his earliest set of verses [...] Lyster, too, brought Samuel Ferguson's “Mesgadra” into the knowledge of every schoolboy in the land. We knew this poem by heart: none made more use of it than Joyce.’ (p.5.)
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Notes
Ulysses (1): Lyster is the model for the ‘quaker librarian’ in James Joyce’s Ulysses (“Scylla & Charybdis” but was in fact a pronounced member of the Church of Ireland. (Correspondence with Esqyn Lyster, a descendant; Princess Grace Irish Library, June 2003.)
Ulysses (2): See the “Lestrygonians” episode of Ulysses (1922), in which Bloom recalls As editor of the Intermediate School Anthology, his selection incl. an annotated copy of the poem “Mesgedra” as part of his class-room poetry staple.
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