Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Scotland in 1814. His mother died shortly after he was born, whereupon his father, an officer in the Royal Navy, sent Charles to live with a nurse in London.

At the age of sixteen he was employed as the private secretary to William Cockerill, an ironmaster based in Belgium. In his spare time he wrote articles for the local newspaper, then returned to Britain to write for London newspapers, and in 1835 became assistant to George Hogarth on the Morning Chronicle. He was in auspicious company: other journalists on the paper included Charles Dickens and William Hazlitt.

In 1844 he moved from the Morning Chronicle to edit The Glasgow Argus. While there he contributed articles and poetry to the Daily News, a newspaper set up by Charles Dickens. In 1848 he returned to London to join the staff of the London Illustrated News, becoming its editor in 1852.

Other than Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Mackay publications include an anthology of his poetry, a dictionary of Lowland Scotch, and a two volume autobiography published two years before his death in 1899.