Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841 under the title Memoirs of Extraordinary
"Night wind hawkers" sold stock on the streets during the South Sea Bubble. (The Great Picture of Folly, 1720)
South Sea Company
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The South Sea Company was a British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt. To generate income, in
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
…later editions, Mackay added a footnote referencing the Railway Mania of the 1840s as another "popular delusion" which was at least as important as the South Sea Bubble. In the 21st century, the mathematician Andrew Odlyzko pointed out, in a published lecture, that Mackay himself played a role in this economic bubble…
The Dividend Hall of South Sea House, 1810
Heraldic grouping above main entrance to the surviving South Sea House, Threadneedle Street, rebuilt after the fire of 1826
1723 pro-forma power of attorney signed by a shareholder of the South Sea Company showing the company's coat of arms and the Latin motto A Gadibus usque Auroram ("From Cádiz to Dawn", Juvenal, Satires, 10)
The South Sea Bubble by Edward Matthew Ward, 1847. A Hogarthian image of the 1720 "South Sea Bubble" now in the Tate Britain