1. A subscription library offered books and magazines on loan for payment. In some cases the members could take out subscriptions to a package put together by the library. Cf. in this connection the ‘Voorwaarden van Abonnement in de Leesinrichting’ of C.M. van Gogh, bookseller and art dealer (SAAm). On this subject see the contributions to ‘Lezen in rangen en standen. Negentiende-eeuwse bibliotheken opnieuw bezien’, De Negentiende Eeuw 24 (no. 3-4), December 2000.

a. Means: ‘een kaars’ (a candle).

2. The wood engraving The haunted armoury after a work by Percy Thomas Macquoid appeared as the frontispiece of The Graphic 22 (July-December 1880). Van Gogh had a copy of this. Ill. 1088 . (t*175).

3. The print Reflections after Percy Thomas Macquoid appeared in the special Christmas number of The Illustrated London News of 1874 (vol. 65, nos. 1843-1844), p. 20. Ill. 1092 . It bears a striking similarity to Van Gogh’s painting A girl in a wood (F 8 / JH 182 ).

4. The ‘book Jew’ David or Jozef Blok: see letter 199.

5. Van Gogh is referring to the engraving mentioned in letter 272, Grève de mineurs (A miners’ strike) by Eugène Froment after Alfred Philippe Roll in L’Illustration 78 (29 October 1881), pp. 288-289. Ill. 1950 . A smaller version is the engraving by Auguste Trichon in L’Univers Illustré 23 (12 June 1880), no. 1316, p. 373.

6. Probably Alfred Edward Emslie, A colliery explosion. Volunteers to the rescue, engraved by Eugène Froment, in The Illustrated London News 80 (25 February 1882), unpaginated, between pp. 200-201. Ill. 1951 . In letter 272 Van Gogh writes about this print, again in connection with Roll.

7. Van Gogh added ‘knowing that there are such beautiful things to do there, which as yet have rarely been painted by others, if at all’ later.

8. For these three prints by Auguste Lançon, see letter 261, nn. 5-7.

9. The letter sketch Four people and a baby on a bench (F - / JH 198) is after the watercolour with the same title F 951 / JH 197 .