8. Van Gogh’s resolution to dispose of nearly all his books displays striking similarities to the decision of Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot’s novel
The mill on the Floss. As fate would have it, she comes under the spell of
The imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, and, of all her books, keeps only this work, the Bible and a hymnal: ‘she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she had risen above the need of them, and if they had been her own, she would have burned them, believing that she would never repent. She read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas-à-Kempis, and the “Christian Year” ..., that they filled her mind with a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of her new faith, to need any other material for her mind to work on’. Ed. Leipzig 1860 (2 vols.), vol. 2, book
iv, 3, pp. 26-34 (quotation on p. 33). It is likely that Van Gogh read this novel, although he never mentions the title; another reference to the book is a passage quoted in
letter 294.