ESTC - Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalog (available online via RLIN
or by CD-ROM). [Most important bibliography of primary works; can
be searched by year, as well as author/title/etc.; contains listings
for both "The Eighteenth Century" and "Goldsmith-Kress" microfilm
collections (see below)]
- The Eighteenth Century. Microfilm Collection of works
published in England or in English: 1700-1800; several SSB items
available; searchable by ESTC.
- Goldsmith-Kress Collection: 1640-1776. Microfilm
Collection of economic works in various languages, organized
chronologically; reels 335-340 cover 1720; contains Het
Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid on reel 339, #5879.
[George, Dorothy.] The British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings.
Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires: [1689-1733]. Vol. 2
(2). London: 1873. [Prints having to do with the SSB and related
events in France and Holland are nos. 1609-93, 1706, 1707-09, 1714, and
1720-26. Entries provide translations and information on specific
details.]
O'Donoghue, Freeman M. [compiler.] Catalogue of the Collection of Playing
Cards Bequeathed to the Trustees of the British Museum by the Late Lady
Charlotte Schreiber. London: Longmans, 1901. ["English" No. 66 on
SSB.]
The South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi Scheme of John Law: An Unique
Collection of Books, Pamphlets, Historical Documents, Autograph Letters,
Caricatures, Broadsides, Portraits, Views, Etc., Etc., Illustrative of
These Famous Schemes. No Bibliographical information. [Auction
list held by the Folger Library, Washington, D.C.; contains a total of
481 items.]
Colbert, Jun[ior]. The Age of Paper; or, An Essay on Banks and
Banking. London: 1795. [Dedicated to E. Burke; concentrates on the
idea of paper money as "fictitious capital."]
Benjamin, Lewis. [Lewis Melville, pseud.] The South Sea Bubble.
London: O'Connor, 1921. [Quotes extensively from 1720 materials;
reflects on previous periods of credulous speculation and sounds a
propitious warning--considering the '29 crash--about the future.]
Erleigh, Viscount. The South Sea Bubble. London: Peter Davies, 1933.
[Superseded by Carswell. Obviously inspired by events of '29.]
An Exact List of All the Bubbles. London: 1721. [Concern to capture
all the SSB imitators in a written document.]
Mackay, Charles. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds. London: 1841. [Rev. 2nd ed. 1852; reprinted 1932, 1995.
[First edition and 1932 reprint related to contemporary events in
financial speculation. Classic study of crowd behavior; more
descriptive than analytical; second Chapter deals specifically with SSB;
other relevant chapters on the Mississippi Scheme and Tulipomania.]
Miller, John. An Interesting Historical Account of the South Sea
Scheme, 1720, Commonly Called the South Sea Bubble; also the Run for
Gold, 1745, and Stoppage of the Bank of England, 1797. London:
1845.
The South Sea Bubble, and the Numerous Fraudulent Projects to which it gave
rise in 1720 .... London: 1825. [Draws a strong connection between
contemporary railway speculation and the SSB.]
Alsop, J. D. "The Politics of Whig Economics: The National Debt on the Eve
of the South Sea Bubble." Durham University Journal 77, No. 2
(1985): 211-18.
Backschieder, Paula. "Lady Credit and Roxana." Huntington Library
Quarterly, 44, No. 2 (1981): 89-100.
[See also Ingrassia and Sherman.]
Carswell, John. The South Sea Bubble. London: Cresset Press, 1960.
[Still generally regarded as the standard political history of the SSB
(i.e., exactly who did what, when, etc.).]
Cowles, Virginia. The Great Swindle: The Story of the South Sea
Bubble. London: Collins, 1960.
Dickson, P. G. M. The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the
Development of Public Credit 1688-1756. London: Macmillan, 1967.
[pp. 90-156.]
[Long considered one of the best economic histories of the SSB; now
should be read in conjunction with Neal et al.]
Erskine-Hill, Howard. "Pope and the Financial Revolution." In Alexander
Pope: Writers and their Backgrounds. Ed. Peter Dixon. London: G.
Bell & Sons, 1972. [pp. 200-29]
Garber, Peter M. "Famous First Bubbles." Journal of Economic
Perspectives 4, No. 2 (1990): 35-54.
Hancock, D. "Domestic Bubbling: Eighteenth-Century London Merchants and
Individual Investment in the Funds. Economic History Review 47,
No. 4 (November 1994): 679-702.
Hentzi, Gary. "'An Itch of Gaming': The South Sea Bubble and the Novels of
Daniel Defoe." Eighteenth Century Life 17, No. 1 (1993): 32-45.
Ingrassia, Catherine, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early
Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit. New
York: U of Cambridge P, 1998.
_____. "Paper Credit: Grub Street, Exchange Alley and
'Feminization' in Early Eighteenth-Century England." Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Culture 24 (1995): 191-210.
_____. "Paper Credit: Grub Street. Exchange Alley and the "Feminization" of
Culture in Early Eighteenth-Century England." Unpublished Dissertation:
University of Texas at Austin (1992). [See previous item for summary.]
Markley, Robert. "'So inexhaustible a Treasure of Gold': Defoe, Capitalism,
and the Romance of the South Seas." Eighteenth-Century Life 18,
No. 3 (1994): 148-67. [Special Issue: "The South Pacific in the
Eighteenth Century: Narratives and Myths"]
*Neal, Larry. The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital
Markets in the Age of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
[Excellent economic study of SSB and market information.]
Nicholson, Colin. Writing and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the
Early Eighteenth Century . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
[Chapters on Swift, Pope and Gay.]
Rogers, Pat. Literature and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century
England. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble, 1985. passim.
_____. "Plunging in the Southern Waves: Swift's Poem on the Bubble."
Yearbook of English Studies 18 (1988): 41-50.
_____. "'This Calamitous Year': A Journal of the Plague Year and the
South Sea Bubble." Chapter 10 of Eighteenth-Century Encounters:
Studies in the Literature and Society in the Age of Walpole.
Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1985. Pp. 151-67.
Rosen, Marvin. "The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie: England, 1688-1721."
Science and Society 45, No. 1 (1981): 24-54.
[Marvin Rosen has just completed a book, one chapter of which
deals extensively with the SSB; for details contact the author
at mrosen@niu.edu]
Sherman, Sandra. Finance and Fictionality in the Early Eighteenth
Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
_____. "Lady Credit no Lady: Or, the case of Defoe's 'Coy Mistress,' truly
stat'd." Texas Studies in Language and Literature 37 (1995):
185-214.
_____. "Credit, Simulation, and the Ideology of Contract in the Early
Eighteenth Century." Eighteenth-Century Life 19, No. 3
(1995): 86-102.
Stratmann, Silke G. "South Sea's at best a mighty BUBBLE":
The Literization of a National Truama. WVT Wissenschaftlicher
Verlag Trier, 1996.
[Thorough review of much of the popular literature--i.e., farces--
dealing with the SSB]
* BP Collaborator.
Late Updated: October 22, 2003
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