Vincent Van Gogh's Favorite Books

Piles of French Novels, Vincent Van Gogh, 1887

In his letters to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh  describes his spiritual and creative strivings and his unrequited obsessions. We get a sense of how Van Gogh's reading complemented his pious, yet romantic nature in the list of some of his favorites, below, compiled by the Van Gogh Museum.

• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
• Jules Michelet, L'amour (1858)
• Emile Zola, L'Oeuvre (1886)
• Alphonse Daudet, Tartarin de Tarascon (1887)
• The Bible
• John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)
• George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1887)
• Hans Christian Andersen, What the Moon Saw (1862)
• Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (1471-1472)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-1852)
• Edmond de Goncourt, Cherie (1884)
• Victor Hugo, Les miserables (1862)
• Honore de Balzac, Le Pere Goriot (1835)
• Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami (1885)
• Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysantheme (1888)
• Voltaire, Candide (1759)
• Shakespeare, Macbeth (c. 1606-1607)
• Shakespeare, King Lear (1606-1607)
• Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
• Emile Zola, Nana (1880)
• Emile Zola, La joie de vivre (1884)

More:  Open Culture