Rylands Papyri Rylands Papyri The Rylands Papyri are a collection of thousands of papyrus fragments and documents from North Africa and Greece housed at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester, UK. The collection includes the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the "St John's fragment", a fragment from a papyrus codex, generally accepted as the earliest extant record of a Canonical gospel. The Rylands Papyri collection held by the John Rylands University Library, is one of the most extensive and wide-ranging papyrus manuscript collections in the United Kingdom. It includes religious, devotional, literary and administrative texts. The collection includes 7 hieroglyphic
John Rylands Library 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