Charles Mackay (27 March 1814 – 24 December 1889) was a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter, remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

In 1828 he was placed by his father at a school in Brussels, on the Boulevard de Namur, shortly taken over by William James Joseph Drury;[2] and studied languages.

In 1830 he was engaged as a private secretary to William Cockerill, the ironmaster, near Liège, began writing in French in the Courrier Belge, and sent English poems to a local newspaper called The Telegraph.

In May 1832 his father brought him back to London, where he first found employment in teaching Italian to the future opera manager Benjamin Lumley.

[3] Mackay was twice married—first, during his Glasgow editorship, to Rosa Henrietta Vale, by whom he had three sons and a daughter; and secondly to Mary Elizabeth Mills, who was likely a servant in the household previously.

The loud waves, rolling in perpetual flow, Stopped for a while, and sighed to answer, – “No.” Mackay published Songs and Poems (1834), a History of London, The Thames and its Tributaries or, Rambles Among the Rivers (1840), Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841).

"[12] Mackay also authored a book in 1885 on the Founding Fathers of the United States titled The Founders of the American Republic: A History and Biography that included profiles on George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison.