Books & Manuscripts

Contact

• London

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    Thomas Venning

    Head of Department

    Thomas Venning

    Head of Department

    tvenning@christies.com+44 (0)20 7389 2255

    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: one 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. In recent years he has developed a fascination for the life and works of Albert Einstein, sealed when he sold Einstein’s iconic leather jacket in July 2016 (£110,500); and in 2017 he launched a series of online sales of the extraordinary correspondence between Einstein and his closest friend, Michele Besso. Building on the succss of these sales, he has developed an ongoing online auction series under the title On the Shoulders of Giants, devoted to letters, offprints and association objects by the great scientists from Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin to Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
    
    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 archives of prime ministers and politicians including George Canning 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. His interest in Anglo-French cultural exchange is reflected by his work as Chair of the Rimbaud & Verlaine Foundation.

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    Margaret Ford

    International Head of Group, Books & Science

    Margaret Ford

    International Head of Group, Books & Science

    mford@christies.com+44 (0)20 7389 2150

    Meg Ford celebrated 25 years at Christie's Book Department in 2019; she was appointed Head of the London Book & Manuscript department in 2004 and International Head of Group in 2013.
    
    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). In the field of science she set the world auction record for Darwin with his annotated Origin of Species (£788,000, 2017) 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 3 copies of the First Folio within 18 months, one at auction and two privately. 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 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.
    
    

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    Sophie Hopkins

    Specialist, Manuscripts & Archives

    Sophie Hopkins

    Specialist, Manuscripts & Archives

    shopkins@christies.com+44 (0)20 7752 3144

    Sophie joined the Book Department as a specialist in 2013, covering medieval and renaissance manuscripts, autograph letters and manuscripts, and archives. She is also Head of Private Sales for the International Books and Manuscripts department.
    
    With a wide range to choose from, some of her auction highlights include the sale of the Metropolitan Opera Guild Collection of musical manuscripts and memorabilia ($2,714,063; New York, 2017); working with the exceptional medieval and renaissance manuscripts from the collection of Maurice Burrus (May 2016) and those from the Yates, Thompson and Bright family library (July 2014); and leading Quentin Blake: A Retrospective, a sale of works from Sir Quentin Blake’s personal collection to benefit charity (£768,625; July 2018; and 2019), setting the world auction record for the artist in the process. Proving that the life of a manuscript specialist is never dull, Sophie has also sold a jambiya dagger belonging to T.E. Lawrence (£122,500; July 2015) and Nobel Prize Medals including Doris Lessing’s Literature medal (£187,500; December 2017); cataloguing the personal and literary archive of the hell-raising Irish author Brendan Behan (£200,000; sold in December 2017 to Princeton University) also provided some memorable moments.
    
    Valuing and selling archives, whether comprising literary, political, or family and estate papers, has involved working with leading libraries and institutions internationally. A notable private sale highlight was an archive of Tolkien letters and manuscripts – many of these full of the author’s Old English verse – sold to the University of Leeds, while Sophie’s work on submissions for the Acceptance in Lieu scheme has included the substantial archives of the Earls of Dudley and Marquesses of Londonderry, and the papers of public figures from Denys Lasdun to Gerard Manley Hopkins.
    
    Recently, Sophie has been working on the Book Department’s successful online-only sales, from Einstein: Letters to a Friend - a series of three online sales achieving 100% sell-through rates and £2,750,000 in total - to the Book department's online science series On the Shoulders of Giants, which has featured material from Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking, the latter property offered directly from the late professor's estate.
    
    Sophie speaks English and Spanish, and reads French and German.

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    Julian Wilson

    Senior Specialist, Books, Maps & Manuscripts

    Julian Wilson

    Senior Specialist, Books, Maps & Manuscripts

    jwilson@christies.com+44 (0)20 7389 2157

    Julian has over 20 years of experience in the antiquarian book world, and has worked for over a decade in Christie's Books & Manuscripts department.
    
    Julian’s first job as a Christie’s Specialist was to catalogue the Foljambe Collection of natural history. This included selling a complete subscriber’s set of John Gould’s magnificent ornithological books for £1,252,500 (April 2008). He has gone on to handle many other fine natural history, science and travel books, including maps and atlases. Some of Julian’s favourite objects that he has brought to market include: a pair of John Russell’s extremely rare prints of the moon (£125,000, December 2016); two copies of Mendel’s offprint on genetics and the laws of inheritance, Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden (£242,500, July 2016 and £287,250, July 2019); an extremely rare example of the famous Chinese ‘Blue Map’, Complete Geographical Map of the Great Qing Dynasty (£137,500 December 2018); and Marx’s presentation copy of Das Kapital to his cousin (£344,750, December 2019).
    
    He has also enjoyed being involved with non-book lots, and pioneered new markets for objects such as Apple-1 computers (£133,250, November 2010) and Enigma machines (£67,250, same sale), setting new world records at that time.
    
    Over the past five years, Julian has grown and developed extremely successful sales of photographs, maps, posters and other ephemera relating to major 20th-century geo-political events. This ties into his life-long interest with TE Lawrence.
    
    Julian also has a fascination with paleontology, geology and the earth sciences, and has helped catalogue a major private collection on the subject.

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    Eugenio Donadoni

    Senior Specialist

    Eugenio Donadoni

    Senior Specialist

    edonadoni@christies.com+44 (0)20 7389 2152

  • 

    Mark Wiltshire

    Specialist

    Mark Wiltshire

    Specialist

    mwiltshire@christies.com+44 (0)20 7752 3188

    Mark joined the Books and Manuscripts department at King Street in 2017 as a printed book specialist after managing an antiquarian bookshop in London.
    
    Responsible for the appraisal and cataloguing of all manner of printed books, he has nevertheless been able to fulfil his passion for literature by overseeing the successful sale of Shakespeare and Goethe: Masterpieces of European Literature from the Schøyen Collection (December 2019), and other tranches of fine poetry and prose including modern first editions from the library of Noël Coward.
    
    Other recent highlights include the discovery of a presentation copy of Ada Lovelace’s ‘Sketch of the Analytical Engine’ – which sold for £212,500 in December 2019, setting a new auction record - and the sale of Important Scientific Books from the Collection of Peter and Margarethe Braune (July 2019).
    
    Mark holds a Master’s degree in English Literature (1700-1830) from the University of Oxford, where he specialised in the works of the Romantic poets, and has lectured on the life and poetry of his beloved John Keats.

  • 

    Emily Pilling

    Sale Coordinator

    Emily Pilling

    Sale Coordinator

    epilling@christies.com+44 (0) 207 389 2151

• New York

  • 

    Christina Geiger

    Head of Department

    Christina Geiger

    Head of Department

    cgeiger@christies.com+1 212 636 2667

    Christina Geiger began her career as a Books specialist at Christie’s New York in 2000 and worked at Christie’s East and Rockefeller Center over a banner two years which included several landmark sales. She then spent four years at a specialty books and manuscripts auction house in California before returning to the East Coast in 2006 where she became Director of the New York Books & Manuscripts department for a leading international auction house. Favorite (and characteristically diverse) properties handled by her there include the Dictionary Collection of Thomas Rodgers, the Arctic Library of Dr. William Priester, the Arnold Smoller collection of contemporary livres d’artiste, Treasures from The Caren Archive, and the anonymous autograph collection which included the record-holding Charles Darwin letter on the Bible. Further, she was the principal specialist for both the highest-grossing single-owner sale in that department’s history, American Experience: 1630-1890 at $4 million; and their record for a printed book, the 1476 Aristotle de Animalibus on vellum at $940K. Since rejoining Christie’s in 2016, notable sales in New York have included the record-holding Newton Principia, the Portland set of Audubon’s Birds of America, and the Einstein “God Letter.” She was Head of Sale for the highly successful single-owner auctions of the Martin Greene Library of Russian America and Polar Exploration (2017) and Summa de Arithmetica: The Birth of Modern Business (2019). She was promoted to Head of Department at the end of 2018.
    
    While Christina finds the exhilaration of auction strategy and achievement to be deeply satisfying, she also relies on steady involvement with bookish not-for-profits to balance her business life. She is a past Council Member of the Bibliographical Society of America (2012-2016), a special event auctioneer for the Center for Book Arts, and an active member of the Grolier Club, America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles. She is a member of the Grolier Club Admissions, Members’ Exhibition, and Executive Committees, serving in the latter as Grolier Club Secretary.

  • 

    Peter Klarnet

    Senior Specialist, Americana

    Peter Klarnet

    Senior Specialist, Americana

    pklarnet@christies.com+1 212 636 2668

    Peter joined Christies in 2016 after twenty years working with manuscript Americana, spending the first portion of his career cataloging for, and later managing, a Connecticut auction house specializing in historical autographs. In 2005 he left that firm to pursue opportunities as a consultant, agent and dealer. Although his primary interests center on early America, especially the American Revolution and Early Republic, Peter has appraised and cataloged a wide range of material from the 17th to the 20th century including the Leonard Finger Theatrical Collection, the collections of Henry E. Luhrs, Donald Dow, John Lattimer, Douglas O'Dell, the papers of Ernest O'Malley, Louis Filler, and Frederick Towers. Since joining Christie's, Peter has worked with several important collections including the papers of the Marquis de Chastellux, The Findlay-Wright Papers, the Roger Judd Collection of American Historical Autographs and the Louisiana Purchase Collection of A. J. Tullock as well as the Albert Einstein God Letter, bringing $2.89 million—a world record for an Einstein letter at auction. Peter holds a B.A. in History from Antioch College, and a M.A. in History from the University of Delaware with a certificate in museum studies. He has curated several exhibits including a major exhibition at Federal Hall in New York celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln in 2009. Peter is a member of the Bibliographical Society of America, the New York Historical Society, and is a Trustee of the Manuscript Society.

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    Heather Weintraub

    Specialist, Books, Manuscripts, & Archives

    Heather Weintraub

    Specialist, Books, Manuscripts, & Archives

    hweintraub@christies.com+1 212 636 2673

    After spending several years working for a well-known Manhattan rare book dealer specializing in literary archives and 19th- and 20th-century British and American literature, Heather joined Christie's in 2017. She quickly fell in love with working at auction and has already contributed to two record-breaking sales that reflect her wide-ranging interests and versatility as a specialist: Albert Einstein: The God Letter ($2,892,500, December 2018) and the New York Books & Manuscripts department's first online sale, Write Me and Tell Me Your Heart: Leonard Cohen's Letters to Marianne (100% sold, $876,000, June 2019).
    
    Heather has over a decade of experience in the field of rare books and manuscripts. She holds an A.B. in English from Vassar College, where she concentrated in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. After Vassar, she cut her teeth in the hallowed halls of the Strand as cataloguer and buyer in the Rare Book Room before pursuing an M.L.S. from Pratt Institute with a certificate in Archives and a concentration in Special Collections. During that time studied descriptive bibliography at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, Virginia, and spent a semester as a graduate intern in the Rare Books Division of the New York Public Library.
    
    A bibliophile since childhood, Heather collects books-on-books and is a member of both the Grolier Club and the Bibliographical Society of America.

  • 

    Rhiannon Knol

    Specialist

    Rhiannon Knol

    Specialist

    rknol@christies.com+1 212 636 2664

    Rhiannon specializes in early printing, the classical tradition, and the history of science and ideas. Since joining Christie’s in 2017, she has been instrumental in the selling of two incunables for over $1 million: Luca Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica; and the editio princeps of Plato's dialogues. In 2021, she was Head of Sale for Selections from the Library of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Gutfreund, which was 97% sold by lot and more than doubled its pre-sale estimate. Also in 2021 she was the lead cataloguer for all early printed books in The Collection of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg, which totaled $11 million. She has additionally earned numerous auction records for printed works in both European and Colonial Americana.
    
    Originally from Virginia, Rhiannon grew up in the small bookshop her mother managed and received her BA in Classics from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She has an MA in Classics from UCLA, where she studied Latin literature & the history of the book and helped to catalog the Richard and Mary Rouse Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts (ACMRS 2017). She previously worked at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where she was the assistant curator of the 2016 exhibition The Art of Alchemy (in Berlin, Alchemie: Die Grosse Kunst), as well as a member of the curatorial team for several other major shows.
    
    Rhiannon is active in scholarly and bookish societies—including the Grolier Club, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Women's Classical Caucus—and has contributed to publications on topics ranging from Medieval manuscripts to artists’ books. She reads Latin, ancient Greek, and French.

  • 

    Andrew Darlington

    Sale Coordinator

    Andrew Darlington

    Sale Coordinator

    ADarlington@christies.com+1 212 636 2111

• Paris

  • 

    Adrien Legendre

    Head of Department

    Adrien Legendre

    Head of Department

    alegendre@christies.com+33 (0)1 40 76 83 74

    After graduating from the Sorbonne in 2005 with a degree in History, Adrien Legendre joined a prestigious Parisian book dealer, then the Books department of an international auction house, spending 5 years in Paris and 4 subsequent years in New York.
    
    In July 2017, Adrien joined Christie’s as the Head of the Books and Manuscripts department in Paris. He led with success the sale the Baroness Thysen-Bornemiza collection in 2017, the Juan de Besteigui collection in 2018 (€1,970,625, with 100% of lots sold), the Marc Litzler collection in 2019 (€4,401,375), The Paul Destribats Bibliothèque des Avant-Gardes part 1 in 2019 (€8,116,812), The Alfred Cortot collection in 2019 (€1,839,000), The Library of Martine de Behague and the Counts of Ganay, part 1 in 2019 (€1,641,250), The Paul Destribats Bibliothèque des Avant-Gardes part 2 (€2,171,425, with 100% of lots sold).
    
    Thanks to his international experience, Adrien secured major consignments for the London and New York sales, including the Declaration Of Independence (Stone, 1823), which sold for US$852,500 in 2018.

  • 

    Vincent Belloy

    Specialist

    Vincent Belloy

    Specialist

    vbelloy@christies.com+33 (0) 1 40 76 84 39

    Vincent Belloy is a Specialist in the Books and Manuscript department at Christie’s Paris. With two master's degrees from the Sorbonne where he studied Medieval History and Art, with a special focus on heraldry and the history of colours, he joined Christie’s in 2016. Since then, Vincent has contributed to major successes, including the sales of the collections of Juan de Beistegui (totalling €1,970,000 with 100% of lots sold for the books section), Marc Litzler (€4,400,000), Alfred Cortot, Martine de Béhague and the Counts of Ganay and Paul Destribats (with a running total of €13,900,000 after the first three parts).

• Hong Kong

  • 

    Georgina Hilton

    Head of Classic Art, Asia Pacific

    Georgina Hilton

    Head of Classic Art, Asia Pacific

    ghilton@christies.com+852 2978 6862

    Georgina is responsible for developing the market and taste for European Classical Art across Asia. Prior to moving to Hong Kong in 2019, Georgina was in the Old Master Paintings department in London. She is also a global Christie’s Auctioneer, taking flagship sales in Hong Kong, New York and London.

  • 

    Melody Lin

    Liaison, Classic Art Group, Asia Pacific

    Melody Lin

    Liaison, Classic Art Group, Asia Pacific

    melodylin@christies.com+852 2978 6850

    Melody is responsible for expanding the market and interest of Western Classical Art in Asia, focusing on the International highlights tour and educational panels in Hong Kong, Taipei and mainland China. She joined Christie’s through the Graduate Trainee Program in 2018, and officially joined Classic Art Group in 2019. Melody was involved in number of major sales such as the Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 13 in Verona, Leonardo da Vinci The Head of a Bear, and rare manuscripts by Isaac Newton.