Books and Manuscripts

A recognised authority on early printing, Meg has handled rare books ranging from editio princeps of classical texts, beautiful botanical books, ground-breaking scientific texts, and great world literature, setting auction records in all these fields, with books such as Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica ($1.215m, 2019), Adam Smith’s own copy of The Wealth of Nations (£908,000, 2018), Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis, (£1.9m, 2016), and a deluxe vellum copy of the 1470 Virgil (£1.2m, 2013). She led the team in the record-breaking sale of a printed Columbus Letter ($3.9 million, 2023), an autograph manuscript with Isaac Newton's revisions of his Principia for the second edition (£1.7m, 2021) and masterminded the series of Beltrame and Braune science sales. She was responsible for the only auction coinciding with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (Shakespeare, The Four Folios, 25 May 2016) and likes to think that she may be the only person since the 18th century to have sold 7 copies of the First Folio in as many years; she regularly features on documentaries about Shakespeare’s First Folio. Her rare book research has led to numerous discoveries and detecting books stolen from the Danish Royal Library.

Meg is the author of the two-volume catalogue of incunabula in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam (1989); a contributing author to The History of the Book in Britain, vol. III (Cambridge University Press: 1999), and of numerous articles in scholarly journals. She has been an invited speaker at the Library of Congress, the British Library, the Grolier Club and elsewhere and has given bibliographic masterclasses at Cambridge University Library. Meg is a past-President of the Bibliographical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a member of the Grolier Club and the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, and she sits on the development board of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Meg speaks German fluently.

Thomas Venning has been Christie’s lead specialist for autographs and archives since 1998, and Head of Books & Manuscripts in London since 2014.

As specialist and head of department, he has overseen many high-profile sales: an early favourite was The Albin Schram Collection of Autograph Letters (July 2007), described in 100-point type by one newspaper as ‘the greatest letters ever written’; but his favourite single lot is undoubtedly the wonderful autograph of J.S. Bach’s prelude, fugue and allegro for lute, BWV 998, which sold for just over £2.5m in July 2016. His fascination for the life and work of Albert Einstein, sealed when he sold Einstein’s iconic leather jacket in July 2016 (£110,500), led in September 2023 to the auction of Einstein’s autograph manuscript Altes und Neues zur Feld-Theorie at Christie’s Shanghai (CNY 9.375m / £1.05m), the first Classic Art lot to be offered by Christie’s in Mainland China. As head of department, he has led Christie’s to market leadership in London, a position founded on the success of the twice-yearly Valuable Books and Manuscripts sales, the most valuable regular auction series in the Books world, coupled with a stellar series of single-owner sales, including most recently the library of the late Charlie Watts and the autograph collection The Alphabet of Genius (both 2023).

Thomas is one of the UK’s leading specialists in the valuation and sale of archives: notable sales have included the original manuscripts for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the ‘A’ manuscript of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the archive and office of Stephen Hawking, the archives of prime ministers and politicians including George Canning, Arthur Balfour and Edward Heath, and papers of soldiers, scientists, industrialists and opera companies, as well as many family and estate archives. He has a particular expertise in the Acceptance In Lieu process.

A graduate of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Thomas speaks fluent English and French.

Eugenio Donadoni joined Christie’s in 2010, where he leads the manuscripts team with responsibility for the appraisal, researching, cataloguing and marketing of medieval and Renaissance and earlier western manuscripts worldwide.

Born in Florence and raised in Naples, he read for undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral degrees at Oxford University. Career highlights include the sale of the Rothschild Prayerbook ($13.6m, the world record at auction for an illuminated manuscript, January 2014); the Carolingian ‘Gospels of Queen Theutberga’ (£1.99m, July 2015); the lavishly illuminated Almanac Hours (£1.63m, July 2020); a sumptuous Book of Hours by the Master of the Paris Bartholomeus Anglicus ($3.6m, April 2021); and the Crosby-Schøyen Codex, one of the oldest books in existence (£3.06m, June 2024).

Notable collection sales have included the Arcana Collection of Exceptional Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 2010-11); the stunning group of manuscripts in Yates, Thompson and Bright: a Family of Bibliophiles (London, 16 July 2014), the collection of Maurice Burrus (London, 25 May 2016); the extraordinary illuminated manuscripts and printed books from the collection of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg (New York, 23 April 2021); and the world heritage manuscripts offered in Manuscript Masterpieces from the Schøyen Collection (London, 11 June 2024).

Over the past 15 years Eugenio has negotiated a significant number of multi-million pound private sales of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts to clients in Europe, the UK and the Americas: most significantly the Clumber Park Chartier (now in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library) and the Breviary of Saint-Louis de Poissy (now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France).

Eugenio is one of Christie’s international auctioneers and takes sales in London, Paris and New York. He is a Fellow and Visiting Committee member of the Morgan Library and a member of the Bibliographical Society. He plays in a much-loved – if terrible – rock band, will offer unsolicited advice on anything food-related and is trilingual in English, Italian and French. He also reads Latin and Ancient Greek.

Sophie joined Christie’s in 2013 as specialist in medieval & Renaissance manuscripts, autograph letters, and archives. In 2025, after deciding that roughly 1,000 years of handwritten history wasn’t enough to contend with, her remit expanded to include printed books, becoming the only specialist internationally to work across all fields. Since 2019, she has been Head of Private Sales for the International Books and Manuscripts department, coordinating record-breaking years in London, Paris and New York and contributing to millions of pounds’ worth of private sales to individuals and institutions.

Sophie has had the pleasure of leading sales as diverse as the Metropolitan Opera Guild Collection of musical manuscripts and memorabilia (New York, 2017) and ‘Quentin Blake: A Retrospective’, an auction of works from Sir Quentin Blake’s personal collection sold to benefit charity (London, 2018), as well as working on the exceptional illuminated manuscripts from the collection of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg (New York, 2021). A recent favourite was ‘The Alphabet of Genius’ (London, 2023), a landmark sale of autographs which set new records in the field, from art (Saint-Exupéry) to science (Edmond Halley). In private sales, Sophie has sold works from a wide range of authors, reflecting her broad interests: from English literature (Keats) to science (Charles Darwin), with an emphasis on female authorship (Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Caroline Herschel).

Sophie has extensive experience in the valuation and sale of archives, both by private treaty sale and through the Acceptance in Lieu process: major sales have included the architectural archive of Sir Denys Lasdun (including original models for the National Theatre), the working archive of the much-loved children's author Shirley Hughes, and the family archives of the Barons Braybrooke, Earls of Dudley, and Marquesses of Londonderry.

Mark has over a decade’s experience in rare books and has been responsible for important sales in the fields of science, fiction, and science fiction, having set the record price for a work by a female scientist (Ada Lovelace’s Sketch of the Analytical Engine; £212,500), and overseen successful auctions including First Editions, Second Thoughts: An Auction in Support of English PEN (July 2022), Charlie Watts: Gentleman, Collector, Rolling Stone (September 2023), and Science Fiction and Fantasy (December 2024). In private sales, he has sold works by writers including Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, and Robert Burns, as well as several fine and inscribed copies of the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He was a co-curator of the Loan and Private Selling exhibition The Art of Literature in 2022, which brought together masterpieces like Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), and pictures by artists including Rubens and Picasso. Mark holds degrees from the Universities of York and Oxford, where he specialised in the works of the Romantic poets, and has lectured on the life and poetry of his beloved John Keats.