Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) was born in Cuba into a family of merchants and artists who emigrated to New York, Paris, London, and Liverpool (Farnie, 1989). Her father, Stephen Cattley Tennant, was a merchant, and her mother, Camila Dalcour, came from a family that owned sugar plantations. Enriqueta settled in Manchester in the 1860s with Martha, the second wife of John Rylands (1801-1888). He was involved in the cotton trade and the textile industry. After Martha's death in 1875, Enriqueta and John married, but their marriage lasted only a few years as Rylands died in 1888. From that moment on, Mrs. Rylands set herself the goal of opening a public library in memory of her husband, a task that required her to become personally involved in the acquisition of manuscripts and rare books (West, 2000; Gow, 2023). She purchased the Earl Spencer collection for £210,000 in 1892 (Simmons, 19997) and the Earl of Crawford collection in 1901 for £155,000 (Hodgson, 2017). Finally, in 1990, the John Rylands Library opened its doors.
Bibliography
FARNIE, Douglas A. (1898): "Enriqueta Augustina Rylands, (1843-1908), Founder of the John Rylands Library", vol. 71, nº 2, Bulletin of John Rylands University Library Manchester, pp. 3-38.
HODGSON, John (2017): "Class Acts: The Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Earls of Crawford and Their Manuscript Collections", Tesis doctoral. University of Manchester, Mánchester, pp. 139-147.
SIMMONS, Clare A. (1997): "George John Spencer", en Nineteenth-Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers, Dictionary of Literary Biography, editado por William Baker y Kenneth Womack, Gale Research, Londres.
WEST, Susie (2000): "Rare Books and Rare Women: Gender and Private Libraries 1660-1830", en Gendering Library History, editado por Evelyn Kerslake y Nickianne Moody, Liverpool John Moores University Press, Liverpool, pp. 179-195.