Often compared to Hogwarts school in the Harry Potter novels, the John Rylands Library frequently elicits a whisper of “wow” when visitors step in from the bustle of Manchester city centre.<\/b><\/p>\n
The shrine to knowledge, which cost the equivalent of about \u00a3100 million in today’s money at its 1900 opening, holds archives including ancients fragments of scriptures and the notes of computing pioneer Alan Turing.<\/p>\n
It is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year but little is known about its Cuban-born founder who, on her death, left an estate worth a staggering \u00a3376 million.<\/p>\n
Born Enriqueta Augustina Tennant in 1843, she was the daughter of a French-American woman and a merchant from northern England.<\/p>\n
Dr Elizabeth Gow, who is a manuscript curator at John Rylands Library, says: “In Cuba, she was part of the privileged class of white plantation owners – the family did own enslaved people.”<\/p>\n
Following her father’s death in a rail accident, Enriqueta moved to New York where her mother Camila married the exiled Polish musician Julian Fontana, better known for his work with the composer Frederic Chopin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Often compared to Hogwarts school in the Harry Potter novels, the John Rylands Library frequently elicits a whisper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-424578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115204644285588670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}