Fred Hanna could never have been an accountant. After a lifetime of handling, stocking and selling books he is more sure than ever that he hates paperwork, which is ironic, considering his passion centres around a bound mass of paper. Last Monday he retired from the business on Nassau Street, Dublin, spending his last few days feeling mixed emotions as he said his goodbyes, did his last stocktaking and signed the last of the "damned" legal documents which transfer his business to Eason's.

He will not miss "battling through the traffic" in the early morning. "In the old days you could charge into town on a car or a motorbike and park outside all day," he says.

News of the change of ownership has evoked a feeling of nostalgia from thousands of people who have browsed the intimate surroundings as students from across the road at Trinity College or simply as bookshop devotees. Why did he sell?

He says it is "a hard question" but a number of factors came together. Last year, an offer was made by a British retailer for the lease alone on what has become "a tourist strip". "But the whole shop would have had to go," Mr Hanna says.

He began to mull over the prospect of selling up when he was laid up with an injured foot last September. His daughter, Judy, wanted to ease off work because of family commitments and his son, Fred junior, who also worked in the business and launched the Internet site wanted to do other things.

"I have done 47 years of it. I thought, if I do not go now, I will be here for the rest of my life kind of thing. We investigated the market. Eason's came along and made an offer. They had heard through our financial advisers that we were open to discussions."

Although the deal with Eason's, another indigenous Irish company whose origins go back 170 years, has remained confidential, the Hanna name was part of the sale. Mr Hanna is pleased with that aspect of the deal saying it is "a wonderful honour".

The family will maintain its other premises, the Campus Bookshop, in UCD, and the Nassau Street staff will stay on as employees of Eason's. In addition, Eason's, which has a strong base as a seller of newspapers, magazines and popular books, will maintain the Hanna name and is expected to develop its middlebrow/ academic niche around the country in a series of openings. "This is a totally different trade from what they are used to, very much more a difficult trade where we have to seek a huge range of books. We can go to 100,000 books at certain times of the year. That takes a lot of expertise and work."

Taking an interest in the customer is the other aspect of the business that has made it a success where so many others have disappeared.

Mr Hanna cites the names of so many who have come and gone over the years - Burns, Oates & Washburn, Browne & Nolan's, Combridge's, the Paperback Centre, Duffy's - although some new arrivals of independent operators in the meantime suggest that the cramped and crammed bookshop maintains its appeal. "The independents are here to stay because they give a service and I think they care about their customers," he says.

"The Internet I look on as a service. Independent bookshops or sellers will have to have it," he says.

Now 65, Fred Hanna entered the business, which has been on Nassau Street since the 1840s, as an 18-year-old. His love of books came from the book and library-buying trips he took with his father, Walter, around the country during school holidays, as near to a treasure hunt as most schoolboys would desire.

"It was more growing up handling books; the love of the book, the smell of the books was really it," he says.

His grandfather, also named Frederick, began the Hanna tradition, taking over the shop from his employer, William Magee, at the turn of the century. For a number of years it was run as a partnership venture, and was known as Hanna & Neale, but since 1910 it has been Fred Hanna's.

The business has annual sales of over £3 million, but, he says, overheads have increasingly grown, accounting now for over 30 per cent of the turnover.

The passing of the family's ownership will see the closure of the business that he most enjoyed, the antiquarian books section.

"I always liked the antiquarian books. You never knew what you were going to get, what you would buy. I always hoped there would be some nice books." He does not name a favourite book or author, probably because it is the handling of the titles he enjoys. He does not even have a large personal collection, just "some books with nice bindings and some nice colour plate books, ones bought for two or three pounds a few years ago".

"I love buying and selling books and I love being with the customer. I hate paperwork. I think we are overrun with paperwork," he says.

Mr Hanna admits that the arrival of Waterstone's in the late 1980s made everybody else "tart ourselves up". "That was the introduction of the restoration, the freshening up and brightening up of shops on these islands," he says.

But he is wary of ever-expanding chains, saying "you cannot keep opening up for the image" and citing the case of Waterstone's which graduated from being a private company to being taken over by WH Smith and is now owned by HMV Media Group. He has always kept the number of roofs over his business to a minimum. If there was a vacant premises next door, he felt compelled to buy the lease out of a sense of never getting the chance again. But he sold off George Webb's and the Dublin Bookshop on the quays after running them for a number of years.

"I prefer to have things under the one roof or two just to have it more compact," he says.

One of his regrets is that he did not open a visitor's book. Rock Hudson, Stan Laurel and Ollie Hardy, Shirley MacLaine were among the famous people who passed through along with most of this century's Irish writers.

But he banishes the notion that bookselling is a gentle, intellectual trade. "Poeple think it is wonderful: `You can work in a bookshop and read books all day'. It is jolly hard work. It is never really ending. The titles are changing all the time. There is always someone to see, a rep selling books . . . restocking of shelves, the answering of questions by the public, looking up a book to see if it is in print, tidying the stock.

"If you handle a book two or three times you will know the title. And if you are interested in your job, it is a wonderful, wonderful job."