Christie’s Books and Manuscripts Department offers for sale the best of the world’s printed books, maps, medieval manuscripts, autograph letters and archives. Our auctions in New York, London and Paris are populated by the greatest figures of Western history and thought, from Virgil, Shakespeare and Mary Shelley to J.S. Bach, Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein, and our expertise covers two thousand years of written culture, from the earliest codex in private hands to the Gospels of a Frankish queen and from illuminated Renaissance prayerbooks to dazzling 20th-century livres d'artistes. In parallel with our auctions, we regularly negotiate private sales of the most important and rarest works in the field to collectors and institutions worldwide.