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"Books and reality and art are the same kind of thing for me." One of the most famous artists in history, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was also a man with another powerful passion - for books. An insatiable reader, Van Gogh spent his life hungrily consuming as many books as he could. He read, reread, and copied out books in Dutch, English, and French. He knew many passages by heart from works by Dickens, Zola, Shakespeare, and Maupassant, among many others. As he wrote to his brother, Theo, in one of their hundreds of letters: "I have a more or less irresistible passion for books." In Vincent's Books, Mariella Guzzoni explores Van Gogh's life as a voracious bookworm, noting what he read, what he wrote about, and how his love of reading influenced his art.