do you have a record of the earliest occurrence of ***-mania? More specifically, was "Beatlemania" created by 'mericans or 'glanders?

There were in Gr. a few compounds in (rare and chiefly post-classical), expressing the general sense ‘a certain kind of madness’, or ‘the state of being mad after some object’, and corresponding as nouns of quality or condition to the related adjs. In the 16th and 17th c. a number of quasi-Greek compounds, denoting species of mania, were invented and used in medical Latin, and some of these, as nymphomania, have been adopted in Eng. Other technical or quasi-technical words, formed in the 19th c., are kleptomania, lypemania, megalomania. In the 17–18th c. the currency of F. manie in the sense of a ‘craze’ or passion (e.g. for some pursuit, or the collection of some class of objects) suggested the formation of a number of quasi-Gr. compounds such as bibliomanie mania for books, métromanie mania for metre, mélomanie mania for song; and hybrid formations such as Anglomanie mania for things English, tulipomanie mania for tulips. Several of these words have been adopted in Eng. with the ending -mania [e.g., melomania, a mania for music, hence melomaniac, one who has a craze for music], and in the 19th c. it became somewhat common to invent nonce-words with this ending. Examples are bancomania, a craze for establishing banks; Graiomania [L. Grai-us Greek], passion for things Greek; Italomania, wild enthusiasm for Italy; Queenomania, (applied by Southey to the popular devotion to the cause of Queen Caroline); scribbleomania, a craze for scribbling. The ns. in -mania have, actually or potentially, correlative ns. in -maniac; the words in -mane are of rare occurrence, and are viewed as Gallicisms.

1963 Times 27 Dec. 4/6 The social phenomenon of Beatlemania, which finds expression in handbags, balloons and other articles bearing the likeness of the loved ones, or in the hysterical screaming of young girls whenever the Beatle Quartet performs in public.


(that would be the London Times)