Shortly after landing in London for his studies in Law, he purchased Salt's "Plea for Vegetarianism" which cost him only a shilling. He read this book from cover to cover as he was much impressed by it. "From the date of reading this book, I may claim to have become a vegetarian by choice" he wrote.
Then he read Howard William's "Ethics of Diet" and Dr. Anna Kingsford's "The Perfect Way in Diet" and became much interested in his own health. In fact, he began to make a series of experiments in dietetics on himself from the date he landed in Africa.
He was so much attracted by the Bhagavad Gita that he started memorising one or two verses every day. For this purpose, he employed the time of his morning ablutions. While cleaning his teeth he used to stand and read the slips of paper with the verses on them pasted on the wall opposite. This was a successful experiment in memorising. Thus, he memorised thirteen chapters.
For him, the Gita became an infallible guide. He was guided by this for ready solution of all his troubles and trials. He said "I must confess to you that when doubt haunts me, when disappointments stare me in the face and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita and find a verse to comfort me and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow."
In 1908, when Gandhi was on his way to Durban from Johannesburg railway station, Mr. Polak, his European colleague and associate, who had come to see him off at the station handed him a copy of Ruskin's "Unto This Last", suggesting that he should read it on the journey. He found it impossible to lay it aside once he had begun.
"I believe that I discovered some of my deepest convictions reflected in this great book of Ruskin and that is why it captured me and made me transform my life" he wrote.
The teachings of the book were: that the good of the individual is contained in the good of all; that a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's in as much as both earn their livelihood from their work; that the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living.
"I arose with the dawn ready to reduce these principles into practice" he said. Then slowly and steadily he brought into being the Phoenix and the Tolstoy Farm.
Yet another author whom Gandhi read was Tolstoy. His books "The Kingdom of God is Within You" and "The Gospel in Brief" left an abiding impression on him. From a reading of these books he felt seriously about the possibility of universal love.
He had read Thoreau's Walden too at Johannesburg in 1906. "His ideas influenced me greatly. I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's Essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience'. Until I read that essay I never found a suitable English translation for my Indian word 'Satyagraha'" wrote Gandhi.