Charles Mackay. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (Vols. I-III). London: Richard Bentley, 1841.
FIRST EDITION () 3 vol. pp. 400; 406 + 2 p ads; 404. C&P. [π]4, B-Z8, 2A- 2C8; [π]4, B-Z8, 2A-2C8, 2D4 ; [π]4, B- Z8, 2A- 2C8, 2D2. Each vol includes a frontispeice (John Law, James I, and Count Cagliosteo, respectively), Vol. III includes two addition plates. Paracelsus (p. 97); Dr Dee (p. 114). Cover of vol. 1 somewhat loose, missing bottom spine panel, front fly leaf bifolium detatched but present. Red silk-like bookmarks. Covers of all three volumes show wear and chipping to spine, threadbear on some edges, scuffing to leather. Fly leaves and pastedowns foxed in all volumes, but text block very clean in all volumes. Dennistoun & Goodman 58; Kress C.5560; Zerden, pp. 77-8; not in Goldsmiths' or Mattioli. Externally Fair to Good; Internally GOOD to VERY GOOD
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) is Charles Mackay’s enduring masterpiece—and one of the sharpest dissections of collective human folly ever written. Organized into National Delusions, Peculiar Follies, and Philosophical Delusions, the work ranges widely and irresistibly: tulip mania and early financial bubbles, alchemy and the quest for gold, crusades, witch hunts, dueling, fashion, and the strange intersections of belief, politics, and mass psychology.
Mackay provocatively argues that crowds are prone to irrational excess, while individual judgment remains the last refuge of reason. Few books have had such a long and influential afterlife: it has shaped popular psychology, economic thought, and investor lore for nearly two centuries. Frequently cited by economists and financiers, it has been praised by both The Financial Times and The New York Times as essential reading for understanding market manias and speculative bubbles.
A true cornerstone of Victorian intellectual history, the first edition of Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions is not only a landmark work of social criticism, but a book whose relevance has never dimmed—an essential acquisition for collectors of economics, psychology, and 19th-century thought.
By Charles Mackay, political and literary editor of the Illustrated London News and later a correspondent during the American Civil War, whose lucid prose and “passionate erudition” helped define Victorian journalism at its best.