The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

’The best book ever written’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

Robert Burton’s labyrinthine, beguiling, playful masterpiece is his attempt to ’anatomize and cut up’ every aspect of the condition of melancholy, from which he had suffered throughout his life. Ranging over beauty, digestion, the planets, alcohol, goblins, kissing, poetry and the restorative power of books, among many other things, The Anatomy of Melancholy has fascinated figures from Samuel Johnson to Jorge Luis Borges since the seventeenth century, and remains an incomparable examination of the human condition in all its flawed, endless variety.

Edited with an introduction by Angus Gowland

Robert Burton (1577-1640) spent most of his life in Oxford, first as a student and later as a scholar. His most famous work, the enormous Anatomy of Melancholy, was first published in 1621 and expanded in further editions throughout Burton’s life.

Angus Gowland is a Reader in Intellectual History at University College London.