18. In 1856,
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik wrote the bestseller
John Halifax, gentleman, the story of a tanner’s apprentice who works his way up to the point where he can afford to set up in business for himself. Widely read, but less successful, was Mulock Craick’s
A life for a life (1859), a book which shows that ‘women and men have similar strengths, needs, and emotions. The plot shows that a man who commits murder and a woman who has a child out of wedlock can experience the same pattern of suffering and redemption.’ The principal characters, both lonely people, accept each other as they are, marry, and decide to emigrate to Canada, because there is no place for them in English society. See Mitchell 1983, pp. 56-58 (quotation on p. 56).
The Dutch translation of
A life for a life was titled
Leven om leven, but no copy has been traced. Mention of this edition is made on the title page of
Mulock Craik’s
A noble life, namely
Een welbesteed leven (Van Kampen publishers, Amsterdam, 1866. Copy in the Groningen University Library). In those days it was not unusual for a book’s title page or binding to display a phrase such as ‘from the author of John Halifax’, and this could be where Van Gogh had seen it.