Every Man His Own Broker [1801]

First published in 1761, this was the first English guide to the stock market written for laypeople. Mortimer [1730-1810], who wrote it after suffering devastating personal losses in the market crash of 1756, sought to demystify financial markets. By exposing the "Mystery and Iniquity of Stock-Jobbing," Mortimer promised to "teach astonished Britons the amazing art of thrusting their hands into the fire without burning their fingers." Despite its biased and critical stance, this book, which introduced the terms "bull" and "bear" to the financial world, provides modern historians with one of the most comprehensive and authoritative primary accounts of stock trading in Great Britain during the eighteenth-century, a time when Great Britain was codifying its position as the world's largest and most sophisticated commercial empire.xxiv, 257 pp.