Charles Mackay

• Born: 1814
• Birthplace: Perth, Scotland
• Died: 1889
• Best Known As: Author of 1841's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

English writer Charles Mackay was a 19th-century chronicler of culture and events and a successful poet and lyricist. During his career as a journalist he worked for London's Morning Chronicle (1835-44), Glasgow's Argus (1844-47), the Illustrated London News (1852-59) and, as a correspondent reporting on the American Civil War, the Times (1862-65). Industrious and prolific, Mackay also worked as an editor and was an associate of Charles Dickens. He made his literary reputation in 1846 with a collection of poems, Voices from the Crowd, and achieved popular success the same year with the hit songs "Cheer, Boys, Cheer" and "The Good Time Coming" (music by Henry Russell). These days he is better known for his attempt at an even-handed history of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, 1851's The Mormons; or the Latter-day Saints, and for a book that's still in print, 1841's Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The latter book, a chronicle of various market crazes and irrational fads, is considered a classic in the field of market psychology.

Mackay, who had a doctorate in literature, was the father of popular novelist Marie Corelli (1855-1924), the author of 1890's Wormwood... A modern counterpoint to Mackay's Madness of Crowds is 2004's The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

Quotes:

"The smallest effort is not lost. Each wavelet on the ocean tost aids in the ebb-tide or the flow; each rain-drop makes some floweret blow; each struggle lessens human woe."

"An arrow may fly through the air and leave no trace; but an ill thought leaves a trail like a serpent."

"There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it."

This article is about the Scottish author. For the American arts administrator, see Charles MacKay (US arts administrator).

Charles Mackay

Charles Mackay (27 March 1814 – 24 December 1889) was a Scottish poet, journalist, and song writer.

He was born in Perth, Scotland. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father was by turns a naval officer and a foot soldier. He was educated at the Caledonian Asylum, London, and at Brussels, but spent much of his early life in France. Coming to London in 1834, he engaged in journalism, working for the Morning Chronicle from 1835–1844 and then became Editor of The Glasgow Argus. He moved to the Illustrated London News in 1848 becoming Editor in 1852.

He published Songs and Poems (1834), wrote a History of London, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), and a romance, Longbeard. He is also remembered for his Dictionary of Lowland Scotch. During his lifetime, his fame chiefly rested upon his songs, some of which, including Cheer, Boys, Cheer, were in 1846 set to music by Henry Russell, and had an astonishing popularity.

Mackay first visited and published his observations about America as Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour of the United States and Canada in 1857-58 (1859). He returned to act as Times correspondent during the American Civil War, and in that capacity discovered and disclosed the Fenian conspiracy. He had the degree of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1846. He was a member of the Percy Society. He died in London.

His daughter became known as the novelist Marie Corelli.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.

External links

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• Works by Charles Mackay at Project Gutenberg

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