Enriqueta Augustina Rylands Enriqueta Augustina Rylands Enriqueta Augustina Rylands (31 May 1843 – 4 February 1908) was an Anglo-Cuban philanthropist who founded the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England. Enriqueta Augustina was born in Havana, Cuba, and was one of five children including José Esteban (later Stephen Joseph, who was her twin brother), Blanca Catalina and Leocadia Fernanda. Her father was Stephen Cattley Tennant (1800–1848), a merchant whose family came from Yorkshire, and her mother, Juana Camila Dalcour (1818–1855). Tennant retired to Liverpool, but died within a year. His widow migrated to Paris and married pianist and polymath Julian Fontana. Juana and Julian had
John Rylands Library and the fact that the valuable manuscript collections were to be housed in "that dirty, uncomfortable city ... [with] not enough light to read by, and the books they already have are wretchedly kept" (written in 1901 about the Crawford MSS.) Mrs Rylands negotiated Deeds of Agreement with her neighbours to fix the heights of future adjacent buildings. The permissible height of the building was fixed at just over 34 feet, but it was suggested that it could be taller at the centre if there was an open area around the edges, at the height of buildings that had been