First Edition
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions.
London: Richard Bentley, 1841.
Full Description:
MACKAY, Charles. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. London: Richard Bentley, 1841.
First edition. Three octavo volumes (8 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches; 224 x 140 mm). [4], 400; [6], 406; [6], 404 pp. Five engraved portraits plates (including three frontispieces). Volume I bound without half-title as is common, but half-titles in volumes II and III. Bound without the "Preface" leaf in volume I. Without the publisher's advertisements.
Bound by Root & Son in contemporary half red morocco over red cloth. boards ruled in gilt. Spines stamped and lettered in gilt. Top edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Outer and inner hinges repaired on all volumes. Some light rubbing to edges and hinges. Spines lightly sunned. Some very light foxing throughout. Leaf S5 in volume I with bottom margin renewed, not affecting text. Leaf 2C8 in volume I with bottom outer corner renewed, not affecting text. Overall a very good copy.
“Contains a graphic account of the Mississippi Scheme, South Sea Bubble, &c. This is the best edition in large type” (Sabin).
"The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes." (from the preface).
Kress C.5560. Sabin 43356. Toole Stott, English Conjuring, 859.
HBS 69556.
$8,000.
Price: $8,000.00
Item #69556