Ms. Rowling's agent, Neil Blair, said that he negotiated directly with Little, Brown in the U.K. for world English rights rather than offering the title for auction.

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Christie held his first auction in 1766, some 22 years after an English bookseller named Samuel Baker auctioned off the 457 books that had previously belonged to Sir John Stanley, founding what we know today as Sotheby's.

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Once Nexteer hit the auction block, the Chinese investors proved surprisingly thorough, even though some of them didn't speak English, said a person familiar with the transaction.

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