1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Christie, Richard Copley

CHRISTIE, RICHARD COPLEY (1830–1901), English scholar and bibliophile, was born on the 22nd of July 1830 at Lenton in Nottinghamshire, the son of a millowner. He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1857, and in 1872 became chancellor of the diocese of Manchester. This he resigned in 1893. He held numerous appointments, notably the professorships of history (from 1854 to 1856) and of political economy (from 1855 to 1866) at Owens College, Manchester. He always took an active interest in this college, of which he was one of the governors; in 1893 he gave the Christie library building designed by Alfred Waterhouse, and in 1897 he devoted £50,000 of the funds at his disposal as a trustee of Sir Joseph Whitworth’s estate for the building of Whitworth Hall, which completed the front quadrangle of the college. He was an enthusiastic book collector, and bequeathed to Owens College his library of about 75,000 volumes, rich in a very complete set of the books printed by Dolet, a wonderful series of Aldines, and of volumes printed by Sebastian Gryphius. His Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance (1880), is the most exhaustive work on the subject. He died at Ribsden on the 9th of January 1901.