page_title: Enriqueta Augustina Rylands
section_title: The Rylands Library
hierarchical_section_title: Enriqueta Augustina Rylands / The Rylands Library
caption_attribution_description: English: Here is a photograph taken from The John Rylands Library, which is part of Manchester University. Located in Manchester, Lancashire, England, UK.
context_page_description: Enriqueta Augustina Rylands was a British philanthropist who founded the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
context_section_description: In memory of her husband, Enriqueta founded the John Rylands Library. She admired the design of Basil Champneys's library for Mansfield College, Oxford, and contracted him to develop something similar, on a more lavish scale. She secretly negotiated the purchase of the 2nd Earl Spencer's library, built up by Thomas Dibdin, which the 5th Earl Spencer put up for sale in 1892. The library purchase was for the record price of £210,000 and she commissioned the Manchester academic Alice Cooke to index it.
  The library was inaugurated on 6 October 1899, the anniversary of her marriage. On the same day, she was admitted to the Freedom of the City of Manchester, the first woman to be so honoured. She was committed to many philanthropic and missionary causes and bequeathed much of her wealth to educational and medical institutions (including the Victoria University of Manchester and the library she had founded). She received the honorary degree Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) from the Victoria University in February 1902, in connection with the 50th jubilee celebrations of the establishment of Owens College.
  In 1901, Mrs Rylands paid £155,000 for more than 6,000 manuscripts owned by James Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford of Haigh Hall. The Bibliotheca Lindesiana was one of the most impressive private collections in Britain at the time, both for its size and the rarity of some of its contents.
  A full-length statue of Mrs Rylands, by Manchester sculptor John Cassidy, was commissioned by supporters of the Library and unveiled on 9 December 1907, a few months before her death.
caption: The John Rylands Library reading room
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3110", "Image ImageLength": "4868", "Image BitsPerSample": "[16, 16, 16]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:06:19 13:47:21", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "898", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7096", "EXIF ExposureTime": "2", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:06:18 13:05:02", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:06:18 13:05:02", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "-1", "EXIF ApertureValue": "126797/20000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "2", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "89/50", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "10", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3110", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4868", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5852719/1024", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "5947805/1024", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Bracket", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "380310463", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[10, 22, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM"}