The Californian

Between 1849 and 1853 shares in nearly 120 public companies to exploit the booming goldfields of California and Australia were offered to the British public. The companies were collectively capitalised at over £15 million, but in the end only some £1.75 million was actually raised between 42 of them, with only one company surviving what the newspapers of the day described as a ’gold bubble’. This book provides an overview of the entire bubble event, its antecedents and its outcomes. A number of researchers have investigated an earlier boom in the mid-1820s to reopen gold and silver mines in Latin America and several have studied individual company operations of that period. This is the first detailed investigation of the British gold bubble companies of the 1850s and their involvement in the almost simultaneous gold rushes on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. The edition incorporates an interactive table of contents which makes the reading experience meticulously organized and enjoyable. Extract: "We were towed into the stream and anchored for the night. To look at New York City, with its many lights and its thousands amusing themselves in various ways, from the ship's deck, without the possibility of joining them, was to feel for the first time the slavery of marine life." Prentice Mulford (1834-1891) was a noted literary humorist, comic lecturer, author of poems and essays, and a columnist. He was also instrumental in the founding of the popular philosophy, New Thought, along with other notable writers including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mulford's book, Thoughts are Things served as a guide to this new belief system and is still popular today. He also coined the term Law of Attraction. Table of contents: Autobiography: Prentice Mulford's Story: Life By Land and Sea Sketches: The Californian's Return: or, Twenty Years From Home French Without a Master