Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700-1860

This volume uses the extreme case of misers to examine interlocking categories that undergirded the emergence of modern British society, including new perspectives on charity, morality, and marriage; new representations of passion and sympathy; and new modes of saving, spending, and investment.

Misers surveys this class of people—as invented and interpreted in sermons, poems, novels, and plays; analyzed by economists and philosophers; and profiled in obituaries and biographies—to explore how...