Here's a sad story for you:

take the case of John Tzetzes, a Byzantine scholar who lived during the 12th Century and was forced by hard times to sell off his personal library book by book until he had only a copy of Plutarch's Lives and some fragments of Euclid. Things turned around for him eventually, but most of his life was a hard slog, paying his way through teaching Greek and relying on the book collections of others for his research.

Hits a little too close to home, if you ask me...