Find out more

Modern biographies

• A brief biography of Enriqueta Rylands and biographical notes on many of the people featured in this exhibition can be found in Elizabeth Gow's PhD thesis: 'The Public and Private Collecting of a Nonconformist Bibliophile, 1889-1908’. The University of Manchester, 2023.
• D.A. Farnie, John Rylands of Manchester, (Manchester, 1993). View the article in Library Digital Collections. 
• D.A. Farnie, 'Enriqueta Augustina Rylands (1843-1908), Founder of the John Rylands Library', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of Manchester, 71:2, Summer 1989. View the article in Manchester Hive.
• Magdalena Oliferko, Fontana and Chopin in Letters. Translated by John Comber. Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, 2013.

Contemporary biographies

• Samuel Gosnell Green, In Memoriam John Rylands, Chilworth 1889. View on the HathiTrust.
• Entries from Silvester Horne's diary are reproduced in his biography, W.B. Selbie, The life of Charles Silvester Horne, London, 1920.

Finding the evidence

Catalogues of many of the archives held by the John Rylands Library are available online via ELGAR. These include catalogues of:

• Rylands and Sons Archive
• The Orford Papers
• Other useful archive catalogues include the Archives Hub, and Discovery from The National Archives.
• The National Archives website has useful information about wills and administrations before 1858 and after 1858.

Rylands Reflects

The Rylands Reflects series explores the history of the John Rylands Library, our collections, and our current practice as heritage professionals in the context of racism, colonisation and representation of marginalised groups. The third post in this series, Whiter than white? Enriqueta Rylands’s Cuban roots focuses on the Cuban childhood and family background of Enriqueta Rylands.