Enriqueta Rylands: the Public and Private Collecting of a Nonconformist Bibliophile, 1889-1908

A critical examination of the book collecting of Enriqueta Rylands (1843-1908). It combines archival history with collecting studies to investigate how Rylands’s Nonconformist bibliophilia shaped the special collections of the John Rylands Library, Manchester. This study situates Rylands’s collecting of rare books, manuscripts and prints with respect to Nonconformist and bibliophilic revivals at the turn of the twentieth century. It builds on the ‘religious turn’ in history and gender studies to challenge assumptions about the secular and masculine character of book collecting in the modern era.