‘From Wiclif to the present time’: exhibiting English Bibles at the John Rylands Library, 1899-1911

Exhibitions were core to Enriqueta Rylands’s vision for the John Rylands Library, but have not been a central concern of library history. This seminar introduces the early history of exhibitions at the Rylands – especially exhibitions of English Bibles. These exhibitions were distinctive, but also spoke to wider discussions about the purposes and practices of libraries, especially those holding special collections.

Elizabeth Gow has worked for over twenty years as archivist and manuscript curator at the University of Manchester Library. She has curated exhibitions relating to Enriqueta Rylands and the history of the John Rylands Library and published on Rylands’s collecting, philanthropy and biography. In 2023 she
completed a PhD in Museology at the University of Manchester Institute for Cultural Practices; her thesis is titled ‘Enriqueta Rylands: the public and private collecting of a Nonconformist bibliophile, 1889-1908’.