Sotheby's Talks: Book Week

One of the country’s most celebrated stage and screen actors, best known for his performances in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, A Room with a View and Shakespeare in Love. His many books include biographies of Oscar Wilde and Orson Welles, and a highly acclaimed biography of Dickens, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World. He has written and starred in several one-man plays, including A Christmas Carol, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel, as well as The Mystery of Charles Dickens, which was written by Peter Ackroyd.

David Goldthorpe joined Sotheby’s as a trainee in 1996, following the completion of a Ph.D on the early English novel, and is now the head of the London and Paris Book Departments. During his tenure at Sotheby's, he has been involved in many important collections, including those of the Earls of Macclesfield, the late Lord Wardington, and most recently, the 2nd Baron Fairhaven. In 2010 he oversaw the sale of the Hesketh collection, including a copy of Audubon’s Birds of America which broke the record for the most valuable book sold at auction. In 2021 he played a key role in the sale to the nation of the Blavatnik/Honresfield library, the greatest collection of English literary manuscripts and books seen in several generations.

Adam Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986. During his five decades at the magazine, he has published more than a million words, in hundreds of essays, from personal memoirs to reviews and profiles, along with much reporting from abroad as well as fiction, humour and art criticism. His books, ranging from essay collections about Paris and food to children’s novels, include Paris to the Moon, The King in the Window, and most recently A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism. He has written essays on and introductions to new editions of works by Moliere, Balzac, Maupassant, Proust and Victor Hugo, and is the editor of both the Richard Wilbur/Moliere and S.J. Perelman volumes in the Library of America. His work in the musical theater includes the libretto and lyrics for the musical comedy “Our Table” with David Shire, and for the oratorio “Sentences, “ with Nico Muhly.

Adam Gopnik has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. In January of 2021, he was created an Officer of Legion d’ Honneur, France’s highest civilian or military decoration. He had previously, in March of 2013, been named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. He has also received a honoris causa from his Alma matter, McGill University and that same year also received an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in New York with his wife, Martha Parker, and their two children, varyingly present, Luke Auden and Olivia Esme Claire.

Selby Kiffer joined Sotheby’s in 1984 and now has principal responsibility for historical American manuscripts, travel and atlases, and natural history books. He has been involved in the sale of many of the most celebrated private libraries offered at auction during the last half century, most notably those of H. Bradley Martin, the Garden Ltd., Frank T. Siebert, Otto Schäfer, Maurice Neville, and James S. Copley. Mr. Kiffer has researched and catalogued the most expensive book ever sold at auction, the 1640 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Whole Booke of Psalmes, as well as the most expensive letters ever sold at auction by Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many other figures from American history.

He has played a role in the discovery (or rediscovery) of several bibliographical treasures, including three previously unrecorded copies of the Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence; a lost fragment of the autograph manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 “House Divided” speech; the first half of the autograph manuscript of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; and four early notebooks of Walt Whitman, which had been missing from the Library of Congress for more than fifty years.

Mr. Kiffer is a frequent lecturer to library friends and other academic groups and is active in professional rare books activities. During the summer of 2011 he spoke about the First Folio at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., and about the Declaration of Independence at the Rare Book School, University of Virginia. He was a speaker at the Centennial Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America in 2004; and a panelist at the first Rare Book Forum, “Private Collectors and Special Collections Libraries,” held The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., in 2001. Mr. Kiffer was a featured appraiser on the Public Television series Antiques Road Show and has been the principal subject of three documentaries on C-SPAN2’s Book TV. He is a member of the board of directors of the Rare Book School, University of Virginia.

Kate Mosse is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist and non-fiction writer. Her ten novels and short-story collections, include The Joubert Family Chronicles (The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and now The Ghost Ship) – as well as the multi-million selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel), and number one bestselling Gothic fiction The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter. The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears have together sold over 400,000 copies.

Her highly acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World. Celebrating the inspiration for Kate’s one-woman show which has been touring UK venues in Spring 2023 (a full list of her events can be found here: katemosse.co.uk/events).

The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-Fiction, Kate is also the Founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign and has her own monthly YouTube book show, Mosse on a Monday. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and President of the Festival of Chichester.

The Ghost Ship will be launched in hardback, audio and eBook by Mantle (Pan Macmillan) in the UK and by Minotaur in the US on 6 July 2023. Exclusive editions will be available to independent bookshops in the UK.

Dr. Anika T. Prather earned her B.A. from Howard University in elementary education. She also has earned several graduate degrees in education from New York University and Howard University. She has a Masters in liberal arts from St. John’s College (Annapolis) and a PhD in English, Theatre and Literacy Education from the University of Maryland (College Park). Her research focus is on building literacy with African American students through engagement in the books of the Canon and self-published her book Living in the Constellation of the Canon: The Lived Experiences of African American Students Reading Great Books Literature recently. She is also the co-author for The Black Intellectual Tradition (with Dr. Angel Parham). She has served as a teacher, supervisor for student teachers, director of education and Head of School. Currently she is a sought after speaker on the topic of the relevancy of classical studies to the Black community. She serves as Director High Quality Curriculum and Instruction at Johns Hopkins University, and is the founder of The Living Water School, located in Southern Maryland. The Living Water School is a unique Christian school for independent learners, based on the educational philosophies of Classical Education and the Sudbury Model. In the spring of 2022, Anika and Damon opened The Living Water Center where activities for the Living Water School, book talks, and other events are hosted. The Living Water Center (located in Old Town Alexandria) also houses The Blacks in Classics Museum which is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays for visitors to see original artwork featuring Blacks who have been inspired by classics and the works of the Canon. She is married to Damon M. Prather an engineer and has an MBA (Wisconsin-Madison). He also serves as the financial manager of the school. She and her husband Damon, have three young children, and they reside in the DC metropolitan area.

Over his 25-year tenure at Sotheby’s, Simon Shaw has developed a unique perspective on the art market. His experience spans Paris, London, New York, Greece, Scandinavia, Japan and South America. As Head of Impressionist & Modern Art he set new benchmarks for artists including Monet, Magritte, Giacometti, Miró and Kandinsky. His 2018 sale of Modigliani’s Nu couché for $157.2 million represents the highest auction price ever achieved at Sotheby’s.

Mr. Shaw has presented some of the finest Modern collections at auction, such as those of George Embiricos, Teddy Forstmann, Alfred Taubman, Irvin Levy, Jerome Stone, Elisabeth Lewyt and Louis & Evelyn Franck. He has extensive experience with museums, including major deaccessions by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum and Magasin III in Stockholm.

Since 1999 Mr. Shaw has pioneered sales of Nordic art, bringing artists such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Helene Schjerfbeck, Vilhelm Hammershoi and Harald Sohlberg to a global audience. He is the leading expert on Edvard Munch, developing his market over a series of landmark sales. Nine of the top ten auction sales for Munch were staged by Mr. Shaw, including the 2012 sale of The Scream for $119.9m which set a new World Record for any work of art sold at auction. Dada and Surrealism are further interests, with record prices achieved for key artists including Dali, Magritte, Ernst, Man Ray, Picabia, Carrington and De Chirico.

Mr. Shaw began his Sotheby’s career in 1996 in the 19th Century Pictures department in Paris. Rising to leadership roles in Europe, he instituted auctions of Nordic and Greek Art in London before becoming Head of Impressionist & Modern Art in London in 2006. When, two years later, he was appointed in New York Mr. Shaw became the only Specialist to have run this Department on both sides of the Atlantic. He subsequently served as Global Co-Head of Impressionist & Modern Art from 2015 to 2019.

Today, as Vice Chair of Sotheby’s Fine Art Division, Mr. Shaw advises important collectors and institutions on buying and selling art across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Recent successes have included superb results for artists as diverse as Kerry James Marshall, Clyfford Still, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude.