John Rylands Library - Collections

Collections

On opening in 1900, the library had 70,000 books and fewer than 100 manuscripts and by 2012, more than 250,000 printed volumes and over one million manuscripts and archival items. The main foundation of the library's collections acquired in 1892 was the Althorp Library of Lord Spencer regarded as one of the finest library collections in private ownership with 43,000 items - 3,000 of which originate from before 1501 (i.e. incunabula). Mrs Rylands paid £210,000 for Spencer's collection which included the Aldine Collection and an incunabula collection of 3,000 items.

Owens College Library received Richard Copley Christie's library of over 8,000 volumes including many rare books from the Renaissance period in 1901. It was part of the Victoria University of Manchester library from 1904 and transferred to the John Rylands Library after the merger in 1972. 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 rarity of some of its contents. Walter Llewellyn Bullock bequeathed 5,000 items (notably early Italian imprints) during the 1930s.

The library's collections include exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts, examples of early European printing including a fine paper copy of the Gutenberg Bible and books printed by William Caxton, and personal papers of distinguished historical figures including Elizabeth Gaskell, John Dalton and John Wesley. Nothing is known of the early history of this copy of the Gutenberg Bible before it was acquired by the 2nd Earl Spencer.

The library houses papyrus fragments known as the Rylands Papyri and documents from North Africa. The most notable are the St John Fragment, believed to be the oldest extant New Testament text, Rylands Library Papyrus P52, the earliest fragment of the text of the canonical Gospel of John; the earliest fragment of the Septuagint, Papyrus Rylands 458; and Papyrus Rylands 463, a manuscript fragment of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary. Minuscule 702, ε2010 (von Soden), is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Among the papyri from Oxyrhynchus are a homily about women (Inv R. 55247), part of the book of Tobit (Apocrypha) (448), and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 73, relating to the transfer of a slave.

In addition to the collections of Spencer, Crawford, Christie and Bullock, holdings have been enriched by gifts, permanent loans or purchases of several libraries belonging to institutions and individuals. These include the French Revolution Broadsides donated by the 27th Earl of Crawford in 1924 and the archives of the Methodist Church of Great Britain in 1977. Between 1946 and 1988 a number of sections of the Earl of Crawford's library were deposited here, however all but one of these were withdrawn in 1988.

Mrs Rylands died in 1908 having bequeathed her private collections and an endowment of £200,000 to enable the library to expand. The funds were used to acquire 180,000 books, 3,000 manuscripts and extend the building. The Librarian, Henry Guppy, invited individuals to deposit their archives for safe keeping in 1921 when there were no county record offices in Lancashire or Cheshire and the library became one of the first to collect historical family records.