The filing of Maeve Binchy’s will showed her to be as generous and lovely as everyone thought her to be. Photo by Liam White, via http://www.maevebinchy.com/home.html

Maeve Binchy sold over 40 million books in her lifetime and an argument could be made that she was the most beloved author in Irish history. At the very least, she outsold Irish icons like Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Seamus Heaney.  At the time of her death in 2012, she had amassed a fortune of 10 million Euros, and her will revealed her to be, true to her reputation, classy and generous until the end.

The Telegraph writes that Binchy “left two-thirds of her money and properties in Dublin and London to her husband Gordon Snell, who she married in 1977. The remaining third is to be equally divided between relatives, 18 friends, charities and a number of other organisations, according to her will filed last week at Dublin’s probate office.”

The Irish Times notes that journalist Mary Maher was left Binchy’s collection of The Bell, a Dublin literary magazine published from 1940-1954. “Other friends left gifts in the will included retired judge Mary Kotsonouris, who received a cut glass lamp, and Della O’Clery who was left two cut glass decanters. Mary Maher said of all four women, including Binchy, ‘it was a riotous assembly whenever we got together.’”

Binchy made sure that she got her will right. She claimed to have rewritten it every year after turning 21, and all one had to do was compliment a necklace to have it left to you in the next draft. “My friend Moira Armstrong always says to me, ‘Ach, that’s such a beautiful chain’, so I said I’ll leave it to you in my will.” Another friend was left an engraved silver tray, as Binchy suspected the friend “will know the names of the lawyers inscribed thereon.”

In perhaps the most Irish sentence ever, Binchy had her will witnessed by Donal Finnegan, the owner of Finnegan’s, her local pub in Dalkey, County Dublin.