[2] He wrote a standard history of early bookselling in Australia entitled Old Books, Old Friends, Old 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.

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.

[6] in 1910 he moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where he started a business known as Tyrrell's Ltd.,[1] located at 128 Gawler Place and that dealt in both books and in art.

While at his address he commenced a third business activity—publishing—which saw a growing catalogue of publications, including works by the Australian writer and bush poet Henry Lawson,[7] Australian poet, novelist and journalist Zora Cross[8] and the cartoonist David Low.

He purchased the "established Hunter Street business, Antiques Ltd."[4] and in 1924 bought out Tost and Rohu, an old-established firm dealing in "furs, curios, opals, and South Sea Island mementoes".

In a series of finely-honed observations, mainly in anecdotal form, these books provide portraits of the "bookfellows" that he knew: booksellers such as Robertson, Dymock and Wymark; writers such as Lawson, Paterson, Archibald, C. J. Dennis, Brennan and Brereton; artists and illustrators such as the Lindsays and Low; book collectors such as Mitchell and Dixon; book-loving public figures such as Parkes and Hughes; and international visitors to Sydney such as Twain and Stevenson.

For example, the roomy Castlereagh bookshop: became "a veritable treasurehouse" ... where artists, writers and collectors met to browse, to bargain or just to talk.

It was crammed with paintings, prints, china, bronze, jade, ivories, coins, medals, and, of course, books.