about Librairie Walden

With over twenty years of experience, Librairie Walden is run by Hervé and Eva Valentin, members of the Syndicat national de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne (SLAM), the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), and the Fédération nationale des Experts spécialisés en art (FNEPSA).

Our primary specialty covers first editions, manuscripts, prints, and photographs from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Alongside this core expertise, the bookshop has also made original bindings one of its passions. We work with some of the finest contemporary binding workshops, and can act on a collector's behalf as an advisor or intermediary with these craftsmen.

Librairie Walden was founded in Montrouge in August 2000, and after a few years in Caen — where it opened its first shop in the spring of 2005 — the bookshop moved in 2009 to Paris's 5th arrondissement, on Avenue Georges Bernanos, before relocating to Orléans, where it has been for over ten years now.

For more than twenty years, Librairie Walden has published print catalogues, sent out its monthly "Bonnes Feuilles," advised its clients, and taken part in book fairs both in France and abroad — in Paris (the Grand Palais, the Grand Palais Éphémère, and now the Carreau du Temple), as well as in New York, London, Milan, and Zurich. In 2022, as part of the Salon du livre rare, the bookshop worked closely with two collector clients to mount an exhibition of books drawn from their collections, producing dedicated catalogues for each. For the 2023 edition of the Salon du Livre Rare, Librairie Walden unveiled the manuscript of the poem "Liberté," on which Paul Éluard first wrote, in his own hand, the final stanza — "Et par le pouvoir d'un mot…" — through which the poem became the emblem of the French Resistance.

Alongside their work as booksellers, Eva and Hervé founded the Sisyphe association in 2012, under whose banner they organized three editions of the antiquarian book fair in the village of Lourmarin, as well as two bibliophile exhibitions: one devoted to Albert Camus for the centenary of his birth in 2013, De Tipasa à Lourmarin, and the other to the poet René Char in 2015, Supplément d'âme.

In 2011, while Eva and Hervé were exhibiting at the Lourmarin antiquarian book fair, the event's organizers, Leoda Scale and Bernard Maurel (of the Librairie Quadrarts), asked them to take over its organization. In 2013, the idea of an Albert Camus exhibition came naturally, as a fitting way to mark the centenary of his birth in the very place he had chosen for himself — the village where both his home and his grave are found. The Sisyphe association, whose name speaks for itself given the circumstances of its founding, was created on this occasion. Two years later, a new exhibition was mounted, this time dedicated to René Char.

The two catalogues, conceived and written by Eva and Hervé, are an exact reflection of the exhibitions they installed — one at the Château de Lourmarin, the other in the halls of La Fruitière Numérique, in the heart of the village. De Tipasa à Lourmarin, une exposition pour le Centenaire traced Albert Camus's published work from A to Z, presenting for each title at least one remarkable edition, a manuscript, or an original photograph. Some of the pieces brought together in this catalogue had never before been shown — among them one of the working notebooks for La Peste (on loan from the BnF), Camus's personal copy of Nietzsche (from a private collection), and several leaves from the manuscript of L'Étranger. This catalogue remains a bibliographic reference on the subject today.

Supplément d'âme, 130 reliures pour René Char, meanwhile, grew out of a wish to honor Camus's friend and "brother," the poet René Char, in this same Lourmarin — a place where the author of Le Mythe de Sisyphe would never have found refuge without Char's help. Char, always closely tied to L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and whose body of work spans a much longer period, called for the organizers to imagine a new approach. Built around original bindings, the exhibition presented, for each selected title, at least two bindings from two different workshops, at times accompanied by previously unpublished documents shown exceptionally to the public: binders' mock-ups, correspondence between the author and the craftsmen, and more.

After studying literature and discovering Gérard Genette's theories with great enthusiasm, Hervé worked from 1995 to 2000 at the Librairie Thomas-Scheler alongside Bernard Clavreuil, before founding his own business in 2000, which he placed under the patronage of Henry David Thoreau, whose spirit of disobedience suits his independent character. A member of the Syndicat de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne (SLAM), of which he served as president from 2018 to 2021, and an accredited expert with the Fédération Nationale d'Experts Professionnels Spécialisés en Art (FNEPSA), Hervé — by choice as much as by inclination — practices his trade in close contact with Librairie Walden's bibliophile clients, whom he delights in advising, with passion, to help them build their collections.

After studying philosophy, Éva first worked independently as a bibliographer and catalogue writer for Les Librairies entre les lignes, a bookshop specializing in the avant-garde and Surrealism. A member of the Syndicat de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne (SLAM), she served on its board under the presidency of Henri Vignes between 2016 and 2018. Éva is an accredited expert with the Fédération Nationale d'Experts Professionnels Spécialisés en Art (FNEPSA), through which she carries out library inventories and appraisals and guides novice bibliophiles in discovering rare and precious books. She oversees all projects entrusted to binding workshops, from selecting the work to following it through to completion. Fine binding is one of her particular passions, and she regularly exchanges with binding craftsmen and book artisans.

For any inquiries, please write to us at this address
[email protected]

To reach Eva or Hervé directly
[email protected]
[email protected]

9 rue de la Bretonnerie
45000 Orléans, France
+33 9 54 22 34 75