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Collected by a botanist: the Rylands’ only Shan manuscript
We have got visitors! The Rylands holds one single Shan manuscript that has until now kept its secrets from us (Shan MS 1). At the end of February 2024, two colleagues from the British Library – Myo...
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Sonilluminations at the Rylands
Sonilluminations: the musical equivalent of medieval illumination – the practice of adorning a manuscript with illustrations, grotesque figures, decorative lettering, and other flourishes. The John...
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The art and times of a Yorkshire suffragist – republishing Florence...
Suffrage banner by Florence Lockwood, 1911. © Kirklees Museums and Galleries Bringing an ‘out-of-print’ book back to life Over the last few years, I have spent many bank holidays, weekends and...
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A Plethora of Placements
Matilda Seymour-Lewis working on her placement podcast This year marks 10 years of placements at the University of Manchester Special Collections. Over the past decade we have welcomed a variety of...
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Thomas W. Rhys Davids and the Rylands’ Pali manuscripts
The vast majority of the Rylands’ Pali manuscripts arrived in the Library from Thomas William Rhys Davids’ collection in 1915 and 1917 (Figs. 3-4). Sri Lankan scholar Professor Nicholas Abeydeera...
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Incunabula Cataloguing Project. VIII: Blockbooks (Part 2) – it’s the...
There are about 650 surviving blockbooks1. Of these, only a very small number are still in their original bookbindings. This is due to the growing awareness from the late 16th century onwards of the...
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Revived: The Rylands’ fragile Esther scroll brought back to life
Over two years ago in a previous blog post, we introduced you to the Rylands’ “fragile beauty”, a parchment cut-out Esther scroll (Hebrew MS 54). Since then, a lot has happened. We successfully...
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The Tree of Life: Cataloguing the Ashburne Hall Collection
On the 16th of May, the catalogue of the Ashburne Hall Archive went live. By far the largest collection of material relating to the University’s halls of residence held by the Library, the archive...
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We Have Always Been Here
Ceri James from the Library’s Exhibitions and Public Engagement with Research team (EPER), outlines the engagement programme for the We Have Always Been Here exhibition. The We Have Always Been Here...
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Announcing the Ethiopic Manuscripts Digital Collection
Ethiopic MS 11 We are excited to introduce a collection of Ethiopic manuscripts on the Manchester Digital Collections platform. These newly digitised works will offer for the first time at the Rylands...
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Charles Wesley’s ‘Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending’
Two of Charles Wesley’s most enduring hymns are associated with advent: ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ and ‘Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending’. The first concerns the birth of Christ; the second,...
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The Samaritans and their books
Who are the Samaritans? Samaritans are a religious and ethnic community native to Samaria, a region located between Judea and Galilee in the Middle East. Just like Judaism, Samaritanism is centred...
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The Samaritans and their books II
This is the second part of our blog on the Samaritan manuscript collection of the Rylands. In the first part, we introduced the Samaritans and the origins of the Rylands collection. In this follow-up...
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Elephants in Museums: Studying South Asian Fossil Heritage in Manchester and...
Dr Amelia Bonea Subject categories: Collections / Research I have always been fascinated with the materiality of science and technology. In my first monograph, on telegraphy and journalism in colonial...
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Slavery, cotton and the early history of the Manchester Guardian newspaper:...
Dr Janette Martin, Teaching & Learning Manager and curator of the Manchester Guardian Archive and Amber Russell, Conservator and paper specialist, tell us about a project to conserve and digitise...
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DeepStore – an answer to a gritty problem
A common question asked by many of our visitors is how do you look after all this material? It is certainly a challenge that requires thought, expertise, and care. With new collections being acquired...
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The Conservation of the Grace Grattan-Guinness Photo Album
The wedding of Grace and Henry Grattan Guinness. Image: GGG/3/1 I am pleased to introduce a new addition to the recently catalogued Grace Grattan Guinness Papers: a photo album documenting Grace’s...
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Votes For Women! Making Light Of The Fight
We have recently acquired several items to add to a growing collection of suffrage objects and ephemera, complementing the Women’s Suffrage Movement Archives. Two of these items attempt to create a...
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Sir Harold Evans (1928-2020), legendary editor, journalist and author
Blog post by Dr Janette Martin, Research & Learning Manager and Curator of the Modern History Archives, celebrating Sir Harold Evans, journalist, editor and author who campaigned against injustice...
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‘There is Something for You in this Train’: The Hocking Collection
The Hocking Collection contains novels, short stories, and other writings by the Cornish siblings Silas Kitto Hocking (1850-1935), Salome Hocking (1859-1927) and Joseph Hocking (1860-1937), as well as...
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