James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell (1871-1948)

James Lyell was born in London in 1871, son of John Lyell and Martha Groom. His father was a solicitor and chief clerk of the Thames police court. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and then studied at University College, London. He qualified as a solicitor in 1894. He also served as a Justice of the Peace and was an elder in the Presybterian church at Hampstead. In 1901 he married Agnes Stuart Balmer and they had one daughter, also called Agnes.

Lyell started collecting old and rare books as early as 1889, and his main focus initially was on incunabula. However from 1914, he became interested in early Spanish printing and became very knowledgeable on the subject, publishing in 1926 what remains the standard text on early book illustration in Spain. In 1927 he moved to Oxford where he established close contact with the Bodleian Library. In 1932 he received the degree of B.Litt. from Oxford with a thesis based on his collection of books about the Spanish Armada of 1588. In 1936, the focus of his collecting changed again, this time to medieval manuscripts, of which he eventually acquired over 250.

In 1940, Lyell retired and he and his wife moved to Abingdon. He died in December 1948, and his wife the following year. In his will, Lyell bequeathed some of his best medieval manuscripts to the Bodleian along with his personal papers, and also established a Lyell readership in bibliography at the University. The remainder of Lyell’s collection was sold at auction between 1950 and 1952. A large part of his Spanish and Armada collections is now at Harvard University Library.