Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

A little about the book

Charles Mackay takes readers from speculative markets to alchemists’ laboratories and stories of haunted houses. He is interested in situations where enough people accept an extraordinary claim that it changes how they spend, work, or treat their neighbors. The accounts of the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Scheme, and Dutch tulip trading are among the book’s most famous chapters.

The range also makes the book a lively record of Victorian ways of telling history. Mackay relies on memorable characters, reversals, and striking anecdotes to explain the attractions of a belief. Some episodes have been questioned by later historians, so it is worth treating his telling as one historical source among others. Its enduring hook is the question of what can make a claim feel plausible to a great number of people at once.

Things You May Not Know About Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

• A revised illustrated edition. This Gutenberg ebook draws on the 1852 London edition, which advertises numerous engravings on its title page.
• Three speculative stories. The contents give individual attention to the Mississippi Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, and tulip speculation.
• Markets share space with magic. The collection also examines alchemy, prophecy, and witchcraft.
• An opening epigraph. The title page quotes the French poet Nicolas Boileau on madness as an ordinary human condition.
• Different kinds of evidence. Mackay uses financial episodes alongside anecdotes and historical examples whose status varies from chapter to chapter.