Toller Lecture revised and updated lectures from 1987 to 1997, together with new essays on Toller and the Toller Collection in the John Rylands Library, was published in 2003. However, with the establishment of the John Rylands Research Institute, the decision was made to prioritise the Special Collections of the Library in a revamped "Bulletin of the John Rylands Library", and Toller lectures were no longer published there. It was therefore decided to publish recent Toller lectures as a separate collection which appeared in 2017. Toller Lecture The Toller Lecture is an annual lecture at the University of Manchester's Manchester Centre for
Rylands v Fletcher tort, but instead a sub-tort of nuisance. In 1860, Rylands paid contractors to build a reservoir on his land, intending that it should supply the Ainsworth Mill with water. Rylands played no active role in the construction, instead contracting out to a competent engineer. While building it, the contractors discovered a series of old coal shafts and passages under the land filled loosely with soil and debris, which joined up with Thomas Fletcher's adjoining mine. Rather than blocking these shafts up, the contractors left them. On 11 December 1860, shortly after being filled for the first time, Rylands' reservoir burst