Discover Manchester’s history with The John Rylands Library

Supporting Manchester Histories Festival, the Library will be celebrating the city’s most pioneering women and sharing captivating images from our Guardian Archive.

Supporting Manchester Histories Festival, The John Rylands Library will be celebrating the city's most pioneering women and sharing captivating images from our Guardian Archive.

Manchester Histories Festival is back for its third biennial festival, providing you with the opportunity to learn, discover and interpret histories from across the city.

'Great Women of Manchester' Collection encounters will explore the story behind a selection of rare items from The John Rylands Library's women's history collections. A hand-written manuscript from Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell will be displayed, as will a letter from renowned suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst to C.P. Scott, former editor of the Manchester Guardian.

The Guardian Archive will be the focus of our presence at Manchester Histories Festival’s Celebration Day. The archive is one of the Library’s most significant collections, depicting the newspaper’s key place in the city’s rich history of campaigns for social and political reform. Visitors to the stand will be invited to examine the photographs uncovered from this archive in the hope to identify some of the staff, locations, occupations and machinery captured in the images.

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We are currently engaged in several exciting projects to open up the huge archive of the Guardian and its sister paper the Manchester Evening News. We are delighted to be sharing this work at the Festival, and we hope some of the visitors to our stall can shed further light on some of the photographs we have discovered.

Fran Baker, Archivist

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Manchester Histories Festival runs from Friday, 3 June to Sunday, 12 June 2016. Collection encounters will take place on 8 and 10 June at The John Rylands Library. Manchester Histories Festival's Celebration Day is on 11 June at Manchester Town Hall, 10am to 4pm. All events are free to attend, just turn up.

Keep an eye on the Library’s Twitter and Facebook accounts for a glimpse into the Guardian Archives and a preview of the Collection encounter items.

The John Rylands Library is part of Manchester Histories Festival’s, Manchester Celebration Day 2016 taking place across Manchester Town Hall and Central Library from 10:30-4pm on Saturday 11 June. Bringing together nearly 100 histories and heritage organisations from across Greater Manchester, the Manchester Celebration Day will have something for all the family, including exhibition stands, games, heritage bus rides, craft activities, film screenings, performances and talks.