Charles Mackay

1814–1889

Nationality: English

Historical Period: The 19th Century

Charles Mackay was a famous song-writer and poet, journal editor and colleague of Charles Dickens, and a reporter whose joy was to take the wind out of the sails of cheats and frauds of all kinds. His lively writing style and ability to document the facts of extraordinary financial bubbles and political upheavals from the South Sea Bubble to tulipomania to the Crusades influenced reporters and economists from his time to this day.

You can read Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds at Econlib.