Patrick Comerford
Like many of my friends, I was saddened this week to learn of the sudden death of John Wyse Jackson.
After he moved back to Ireland, John set up Zozimus Books on the Main Street in Gorey, Co Wexford, in 2011. Zozimus Book was an integral part of the Book Café and played an important role in raising the cultural expectations of a north Wexford town that is too easily dismissed these days as a satellite or dormitory town of Dublin.
John’s passion for literature and books was known by all and there was no title he had not heard of, nor was there a book he could not source for a customer. Customers were always welcomed warmly by this friendly and courteous man of letters and author.
He recently told an interview with the Irish Examiner that he had been in business for about 10 years and had 40,000 titles in his Zozimus bookshop, both second-hand and antiquarian books.
John Robert Wyse Jackson was born in Kilkenny on 31 May 1953, when his father, Robert Wyse Jackson (1908-1976), was Dean of Cashel. His mother, Lois, was a daughter of John Phair, Bishop of Ossory.
Dean Jackson, who was also a barrister and a published historian, was elected Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe at the end of 1960, when John was seven, and the family moved to Limerick in early 1961, and when they were still children he and his brother started a little public library for their friends in their national school in Limerick.
After a degree in English Literature at Trinity College Dublin, John worked as a bookseller in London. There, he became a director of John Sandoe (Books) Ltd, an independent bookshop off the King’s Road in Chelsea, wrote and edited several books, lectured and broadcast on a wide range of topics, and contributed to many journals and newspapers, including the Sunday Times, Hibernia, the Journal of Beachcomber Associatesand the Spectator, and to many collections of poetry.
He had a wide-ranging specialist knowledge of the works of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Myles na gCopaleen or Flann O’Brien. He was also one of the founders of the Chelsea Press, whose bestsellers included a facsimile edition of the Freeman’s Journal for the first Bloomsday, 16 June 1904.
John came back to Ireland with his wife and children in 2003. He soon found himself helping out on a bookstall in Arklow, and was soon running it. The opportunity then came to run a bookshop in Gorey. He founded Zozimus Bookshop in 2011, naming his bookshop in honour of Michael Moran (aka Zozimus), the early 19th century Dublin street balladeer and poet.
He tried to have only one copy of a book at any one time, bought books individually and did not go to auctions. But with 40,000 titles it was difficult to find space.
It was a Labyrinth or Aladdin’s Cave of books, packed from floor to ceiling with the most eclectic collection of books from biography to travel.
Coincidentally, one of the first books I put my fingers on in the shop was 84 Charing Cross Road, Helen Hanff’s 1970 book, later turned into a stage play, television play, and film, about her 24-year correspondence with Frank Doel of Marks & Co, the antiquarian bookshop located at 84 Charing Cross Road in London.
Helen Hanff was searching for obscure books she could not find in New York. She and Doel developed a long-distance friendship and their letters discussed topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the coronation of Elizabeth II.
Visiting Zozimus was as delightful as visiting David’s in Cambridge or the lamentably now-gone Staffs Bookshop in Lichfield – although, of course, Marks is long gone too, and 84 Charing Cross Road is now the site of yet another McDonald’s burger shop.
He had written a dozen or so books, including one about James Joyce’s father with Peter Costello, and a life of John Lennon.
I missed the launches in 2018 of Life in the Church of Ireland 1600-1800, a new edition of a book by his father, Robert Wyse Jackson, and which had been edited by John, who invited me to write the introduction to the book.
This enticing 250-page book, published by Ballinakella Press, Whitegate, Co Clare, was the result of painstaking research into the turbulent life of clergy and laity of the Church of Ireland during political upheavals, the influences of plantation and of ecclesiastical establishment.
John Jackson of Bolaney House, Bolaney, Gorey, and Zozimus Book Shop, died peacefully but suddenly at home on 19 February 2020. He is survived by his wife Ruth, his sons Eoghan, Daniel, Conor and Adam, and his sister, brothers, and a wider family circle. His funeral takes place on Tuesday (25 February) at 3 pm in Christ Church, Gorey, Co Wexford.
He will be missed by his family, friends and customers.
2 comments:
Remembering dearest John today. Such a quick year. A darling cousin and dear friend. I miss and think of him every day. Thank you for your lovely tribute.
Me and John were great friends and we would meet often in the Book Cafe in Gorey Wexford, we would talk about John Lennon Beatle for ever. John and I write poetry which made us good friends I'm saddened to hear of his passing
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