Charles Dickens: The Miser Books: Merryweather's Lives and Anecdotes of Misers

Charles Dickens was fascinated by misers. Not only did he keep a personal copy of F. Somner Merryweather's Lives and Anecdotes of Misers (1850) on his own bookshelf at Gad's Hill Place, but he also chose it to be one of the books Silas Wegg read to Nicodemus Boffin as part of his education on how to be a miser in Our Mutual Friend. Containing the equally fascinating and absurd real life stories that both enthralled and inspired Dickens, Merryweather's Lives and Anecdotes of Misers brings together accounts of the most wealthy and infamous misers in history. It includes John Overs, who died while trying to save food by faking his own death, Daniel Dancer, who expired naked in a sack surrounded by his gold, and Thomas Guy, the benevolent publisher and South Sea Company investor, who chose to live in abject poverty, but founded the London hospital which bears his name and continues to save thousands of lives to this very day.