Editing The Anatomy of Melancholy

{{Short description|1621 book by Robert Burton}}
{{About|the book by Robert Burton|the album by Paradise Lost|The Anatomy of Melancholy (album)}}
{{Infobox book|<!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
| name              = The Anatomy of Melancholy
| image             = Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1626, 2nd edition.jpg
| caption           = Allegorical [[Book frontispiece|frontispiece]] to the 1628 third edition, engraved by Christian Le Blon
| author            = [[Robert Burton (scholar)|Robert Burton]]
| cover_artist      = 
| country           = [[Kingdom of England|England]]
| language          = [[Early Modern English]]
| genre             = [[Medicine]], [[philosophy]]
| pages             = 
| awards            = 
| isbn              = 
| isbn_note         = 
| oclc              = 
| dewey             = 616.89
| congress          = PR2223 .A1
| release_date      = 1621
| media_type        = Print
}}
'''''The Anatomy of Melancholy''''' (full title: '''''The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up''''') is a book by [[Robert Burton]], first published in 1621<ref>{{Cite journal | doi=10.1093/brain/awq282| title=Mad world: Robert Burton's the Anatomy of Melancholy| journal=Brain| volume=133| issue=11| pages=3480–3482| year=2010| last1=Edwards| first1=M.| doi-access=free}}</ref> but republished five more times over the next seventeen years with massive alterations and expansions.

The book is a [[Medicine|medical]] treatise about [[Melancholia|melancholy]] ([[Depression (mood)|depression]]). Over 500,000 words long, it discusses a wide range of topics besides depression — including [[history]], [[astronomy]], [[geography]], and various aspects of [[literature]] and [[science]] — and frequently uses [[humour]] to make points or explain topics.<ref name=":0" /> Burton wrote it under the [[pseudonym]] Democritus Junior as a reference to the [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] "laughing philosopher" [[Democritus]].<ref name=":3" />

''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' inspired several writers of the following centuries, such as [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] figures like [[Samuel Johnson]] and modern [[Author|authors]] like [[Philip Pullman]]. [[Romantic poetry|Romantic poet]] [[John Keats]] claimed ''Anatomy'' was his favorite book. Portions of Burton's writing were [[Plagiarism|plagiarized]] by [[Laurence Sterne]] in ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]'' during the 1750s and 1760s.<ref name="FerriarGravity">Ferriar (1798), chapter 3, pp. 55–59, 64.</ref>

== Synopsis ==
Although presented as a medical text, ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' is often seen as much a ''[[sui generis]]'' work of literature as it is a scientific or [[Philosophy|philosophical]] text; when ''Anatomy'' was reprinted in 2001, [[The Guardian|''The Guardian'']] described it in a review as going beyond medicine: ''"''Made out of all the books that existed in a [[17th century|17th-century]] [[library]], it was compiled in order to explain and account for all human [[emotion]] and thought."<ref name="theguardian1">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/18/history.philosophy|title=The Book to End All Books| date=17 August 2001|work=[[The Guardian]]| last=Lezard| first=Nicholas| author-link=Nicholas Lezard|access-date=20 June 2016}}</ref> Both comedic and serious in tone, ''Anatomy'' has frequent "pervading humour"<ref name=":0">Émile Legouis, A History of English Literature (1926)</ref> among its scientific writing and often verges on [[Stream of consciousness writing|stream of consciousness]].

''Anatomy'' starts with a roughly 200-page long [[Satire|satirical]] introduction, "Democritus to the Reader," narrated by Burton's pseudonym Democritus Junior. Here he gives his often-quoted reason for writing the book: "I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid melancholy."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Burton |first=Robert |url=https://archive.org/details/anatomyofmelanch0001burt/page/16/mode/2up?view=theater |title=The anatomy of melancholy |date=1896 |publisher=London : G. Bell and Sons |others=Internet Archive |pages=17}}</ref> He defines his subject as:

{{blockquote |"''Melancholy'', the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in [[Habit (psychology)|habit]]. In disposition, is that transitory ''Melancholy'' which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing forwardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality... This ''Melancholy'' of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled [[The four humours|humour]], as [[Caelius Aurelianus|Aurelianus]] and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed."|author=Robert Burton|title=<i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>}}

The main body of the book is divided into three partitions. The first partition is "The Causes of Melancholy," the second partition is "The Cure of Melancholy," and the third partition is "Love-Melancholy and Religious Melancholy." Each of these has a large number of sections and subsections.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Anatomy of Melancholy - CONTENTS |url=https://www.exclassics.com/anatomy/anatcont.htm |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=www.exclassics.com}}</ref>

The book regularly quotes ancient and medieval medical authorities, including [[Hippocrates]], [[Aristotle]], and [[Galen]], and Burton included a great deal of [[Latin]] [[poetry]] ''—'' much of it from ancient sources left untranslated.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Introduction · the Anatomy of Melancholy · USU Digital Exhibits |url=http://exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/the-anatomy-of-melancholy/context-and-description}}</ref> A significant number of these citations are incorrect, taken out of context, or simply fabricated.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Obladen |first1=Michael |date=14 September 2021 |title=Ignored Papers, Invented Quotations: A History of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome |journal=Neonatology |volume=118 |issue=6 |pages=647–653 |doi=10.1159/000518534 |pmid=34535605}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Bamborough |first1=John Bernard |title=Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Vol. 4: Commentary: up to part. 1, sect. 2, memb. 3, subs. 15, 'Misery of Schollers' |last2=Dodsworth |first2=Martin |date=2006 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0198123323 |location=Oxford |page=xi |quote=Burton sometimes quotes with great accuracy, but this is not usual}}</ref> Karl Hagen speculated in his [[Project Gutenberg]] edition that Burton's misquotations may be the result of quoting from memory.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Burton |first=Robert |title=The Anatomy of Melancholy |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10800/pg10800-images.html |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=Project Gutenberg |language=en}}</ref>

The second edition, published in 1624, contains the first recorded use of the word [[polymath]] in English.<ref>{{Cite web |title=polymath, n. & adj. meanings, etymology and more {{!}} Oxford English Dictionary |url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/polymath_n |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20230720170901/https://www.oed.com/dictionary/polymath_n |archive-date=2023-07-20 |access-date=2025-05-02 |website=www.oed.com |language=en}}</ref> Burton uses it while describing the lengths scholars go to for [[Celebrity|fame]]:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Burton |first=H. |url=https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_the-anatomy-of-melanchol_burton-h_1624/page/6/mode/2up?view=theater |title=The anatomy of melancholy:...  1624 |date=1624 |others=Internet Archive}}</ref>

{{Quote|text="To be counted writers, <i>scriptores ut salutentur</i> [to be greeted as authors], to be thought and held <i>polumathes</i> and <i>polihistors</i>, to get a paper kingdome, they will rush into all learning, <i>togatum, armatum</i> [civilian, soldier], divine, humane authors rake over all <i>[[index|Indices]]</i> & pamphlets for notes, as our [[merchants]] doe strange havens for traffique."|author=Robert Burton|title=<i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>|source="Democritus to the Reader"}}

== Background ==
{{Main|Robert Burton}}
Much of ''Anatomy'' was inspired by Burton's own struggles with depression. His melancholy is the most widely acknowledged feature of his life; he wrote the book in part to relieve this melancholy but found it difficult to do so.<ref>Traister, B. H. (1976). "New Evidence about Burton's Melancholy?". ''[[Renaissance Quarterly]]''. '''29''' (1): 66–70. [[Doi (identifier)|doi]]:10.2307/2859991. [[JSTOR (identifier)|JSTOR]] 2859991. [[PMID (identifier)|PMID]] 11615595. [[S2CID (identifier)|S2CID]] 33995848.</ref> Fellow Oxfordian [[White Kennett]] wrote that Burton could flit between "interval[s] of vapours" in which he was lively and social, and periods of isolation in his college chambers where his peers worried he was [[Suicidal ideation|suicidal]].<ref>[[Arthur Henry Bullen|Bullen, Arthur Henry]] (1886). "Burton, Robert (1577-1640)" . In [[Leslie Stephen|Stephen, Leslie]] (ed.). ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]''. Vol. 8. London: Smith, Elder & Co.</ref><ref>Dewey, Nicholas (Winter 1970). ""Democritus Junior," alias Robert Burton". ''[[The Princeton University Library Chronicle]]''. '''31''' (2): 103–121. [[Doi (identifier)|doi]]:10.2307/26403977. [[JSTOR (identifier)|JSTOR]] 26403977. [[PMID (identifier)|PMID]] 11635553.</ref> His [[epitaph]] — which is believed to have been written by Burton himself — in [[Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford|Christ Church Cathedral]] states: "Known to few, unknown to fewer, here lies Democritus Junior, to whom Melancholy gave both life and death."<ref>Nochimson, Richard L. (1974). "Studies in the Life of Robert Burton". ''[[The Yearbook of English Studies]]''. '''4''': 109. [[Doi (identifier)|doi]]:10.2307/3506685. [[JSTOR (identifier)|JSTOR]] 3506685</ref> [[History of literature|Literary historian]] Jonathan Lamb sees Burton's depression as a counterpart to his academic knowledge:<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Lamb |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalessayson0000unse_e7h7/mode/2up?q=burton&view=theater |title=Critical Essays on Laurence Sterne |date=1998 |publisher=New York : G.K. Hall ; London : Prentice Hall International |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-7838-0040-0 |pages=25}}</ref>

{{Quote|text="Burton shows most vividly how an odd individual can inhabit a book world and use its contents to reveal himself. His experience does not extend beyond the shelves of his college's well-stocked library; all his travelling is done by map, but because his theme is melancholy, a <i>disorder</i> afflicting the whole world as well as himself, he can never find an appropriate or standard response to the information of books. Although texts are exclusively his source for estimations of reality, they offer him neither order nor a coherent body of [[depression symptoms|symptoms]]. So Burton is constantly expatiating, "ranging in and out," his moods constantly shifting between despair and optimism, anger and helpless laughter, all stimulated by the books he is endlessly traversing."|author=Jonathan Lamb|title=<i>Sterne's System of Imitation</i>}}
[[File:Robert Burton by Gilbert Jackson.jpg|thumb|268x268px|Portrait of Robert Burton by Gilbert Jackson, 1635]]
Most of Burton's life was spent at the [[University of Oxford]], and the majority of his information for ''Anatomy'' came secondhand through the books of the [[Bodleian Library|Oxford library]]; melancholy was a topic with which he had personal experience. Lamb notes that "he writes about melancholy in a melancholy manner, exhibiting in his treatise all the contradictions and irregularities that belong to the disease. Burton's real melancholy is both excited and controlled by books and his imitations of them."<ref name=":1" />

Burton left no record of when he began his work on ''Anatomy''. His [[Biography|biographer]] Michael O'Connell speculates the project grew piecemeal, with research beginning in his twenties and the work well on its way by his thirties.<ref name=":2">O'Connell, Michael (1986). ''Robert Burton''. Twayne Publishers. {{ISBN|978-0-8057-6919-7}} {{OCLC|563059617}}</ref> Burton explicitly states that the study of melancholy was a lifelong fascination of his, and regularly "deducted from the main channel of my studies."<ref>Burton, Robert (1927). [[Floyd Dell|Dell, Floyd]]; [[Paul Jordan-Smith|Jordan-Smith, Paul]] (eds.). ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''. New York: Tudor Publishing Company. {{OCLC|713809426}}</ref> However long the work took, it was finished by 5 December 1620 (when he was 43), which is the date he signed the [[Conclusion (book)|conclusion]] of the book.<ref name=":2" />

== Publication ==
{| class="wikitable floatleft"
|+ Bibliographical information for Burton's ''Anatomy''.<ref>Duff, E. G. (1 September 1923). "The Fifth Edition of Burton's ''Anatomy of Melancholy''". ''[[The Library (journal)|The Library]]''. 4th ser. '''IV''' (2): 81–101. [[Doi (identifier)|doi]]:10.1093/library/s4-iv.2.81.</ref><ref>Blair, Rhonda L.; Faulkner, Thomas C.; Kiessling, Nicolas K. (1989). "Textual Introduction". In Blair, Rhonda L.; Faulkner, Thomas C.; Kiessling, Nicolas K. (eds.). ''Robert Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy''. Vol. 1. pp. xxxvii–lx.</ref>
|-
! Date
! Edition
! Binding
! Location
! {{abbr|Words|Total number of words in the edition, both marginalia and main text.}}
|-
|1621
|1st
|[[4to]]
|Oxford
|353,369
|-
|1624
|2nd
|[[folio|fo]]
|Oxford
|423,983
|-
|1628
|3rd
|[[folio|fo]]
|Oxford
|476,855
|-
|1632
|4th
|[[folio|fo]]
|Oxford
|505,592
|-
|1638
|5th
|[[folio|fo]]
|Oxford
|514,116
|-
|1651
|6th
|[[folio|fo]]
|Oxford
|516,384
|-
|1660
|7th
|[[folio|fo]]
|London
|516,384
|-
|1676
|8th
|[[folio|fo]]
|London
|516,384
|}
Burton was an obsessive editor of his own work and published five revised and expanded editions of ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' during his lifetime. The first edition was a single [[quarto]] volume nearly 900 pages long; subsequent editions were even longer.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Nuttall |first1=A. D. |date=1989-11-23 |title=Joke Book? |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/v11/n22/ad-nuttall/joke-book |newspaper=London Review of Books |pages=18–19}}</ref> 

It has often been out of print, particularly between 1676 and 1800.<ref name="complete-review">[http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/divphil/burtonr.htm ''The Complete Review'' discussion] of ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''</ref> Because no original [[manuscript]] of ''Anatomy'' has survived, later reprints have drawn more or less faithfully from the editions published during Burton's life.<ref name="gassintro">William H. Gass, Introduction to ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'', New York Review of Books 2001 {{ISBN|0-940322-66-8}}</ref> 

Early editions have entered the [[public domain]], with several available from online sources such as [[Project Gutenberg]]. In recent decades, increased interest in the book, combined with its public domain status, has resulted in new print editions, most recently a 2001 reprinting of the 1932 edition by ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' under its [[New York Review Books#Series and collections|NYRB Classics]] [[imprint (trade name)|imprint]] ({{ISBN|0-940322-66-8}})<ref name="theguardian1" /> and a new edition in 2023 under the [[Penguin Classics]] imprint, edited by Angus Gowland ({{ISBN|978-0-141192-28-4}}).

== Legacy and influence ==
Medical historian [[Roy Porter]] called ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' "that omniumgatherum of anecdotes of insanity whose burden was that mankind — including the author himself — was quite out of its mind."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Porter |first=Roy |url=https://archive.org/details/mindforgdmanacle00port/page/28/mode/2up?q=melancholy |title=Mind-forg'd manacles : a history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency |date=1987 |publisher=Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-674-57617-9 |pages=28}}</ref> Despite its origins as a medical treatise, studies of ''Anatomy'' over the last 400 years have almost entirely focused on its value as literature. Burton's numerous anecdotes, which tackle melancholy with both sobriety and humour, as well as the overarching influence of his personal sadness on the book are often cited as making ''Anatomy'' his "one truly great work."<ref>{{Citation |title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |date=2004-09-23 |work=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |editor-last=Matthew |editor-first=H. C. G. |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4137 |access-date=2025-05-01 |place=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/4137 |editor2-last=Harrison |editor2-first=B.|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

In the [[18th century|18th]] and [[19th century|19th centuries]], melancholy became somewhat fashionable for the upper classes — owing in part to the popularity of works like ''[[The Sorrows of Young Werther]]'' by [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], the [[Gothic fiction|Gothic genre]], and [[Romanticism]]. This so-called "Age of Melancholy"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Porter |first=Roy |url=https://archive.org/details/mindforgdmanacle00port |title=Mind-forg'd manacles : a history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency |date=1987 |publisher=Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-674-57617-9}}</ref> resulted in a rediscovery of Burton's ''Anatomy'', which had seen a dwindling audience over the last century and had been out of print since 1676. [[Charles Lamb|Charles Lamb's]] push for a 9th edition in 1800 revitalized interest in the book and it became a "literary phenomenon."<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=White |first=White Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZHkxEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false |title=Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy: Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems (1820) |date=2020-09-09 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-1-4744-8048-2 |language=en}}</ref>

[[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] regularly annotated his copy of ''Anatomy''.<ref name=":4" /> [[William Wordsworth]], [[Robert Southey]], [[William Green (painter)|William Green]], and [[Herman Melville]] were all known to own the book.<ref name=":4" />

Figures like [[O. Henry]], [[Anthony Powell]], [[Northrop Frye]], and [[Cy Twombly]] cite ''Anatomy'' as influential in their own work.<ref name=":5">{{Cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=2017-12-18 |title=The 100 best nonfiction books: No 98 – The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/18/anatomy-melancholy-robert-burton-100-best-nonfiction-books |access-date=2025-05-01 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> [[Jorge Luis Borges]] used a line from Burton as an epigraph to his story "[[The Library of Babel]]," and [[Washington Irving]] quotes from it on the title page of [[The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.|''The Sketch Book'']]. [[Holbrook Jackson]] based the style and presentation of his ''Anatomy of Bibliomania'' on ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jackson |first=Holbrook |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001761735 |title=The anatomy of bibliomania |date=1931 |publisher=Charles Scribner's sons |location=New York}}</ref> The book "lurks behind the writing" of [[Samuel Beckett|Samuel Beckett's]] novel ''[[Murphy (novel)|Murphy]],<ref name=":5" />'' and [[Jacques Barzun]] believed it predicted 20th-century psychiatry.''<ref>Jacques Barzun, ''[[From Dawn to Decadence]]'', 221–224.</ref>'' 

=== John Milton ===
English poet [[John Milton]] used ''Anatomy'' as the basis for his poem about melancholy, "[[Il Penseroso|Il Penseroso"]] ("the thinker").<ref>{{Cite web |title=Il Penseroso: Introduction |url=https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/penseroso/intro.shtml |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=milton.host.dartmouth.edu}}</ref> It was most likely composed around ten years after the first edition was published.<ref>Kerrigan, William; Rumrich, John; and Fallon, Stephen (eds.) ''The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton''. New York: The Modern Library, 2007.</ref> [[Thomas Warton]] described Milton as "an attentive reader of Burton's book."<ref name=":4" />

Several of his works, including the epic poem ''[[Paradise Lost]]'', exhibit parallels to ''Anatomy.'' This includes the "golden chain" attached to "this pendant world,"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Milton |first=John |title=Paradise Lost |year=1667 |at=1051-1053}}</ref> as well as descriptions of [[Demon|demons]] and theories of [[predestination]]. Milton scholar George Wesley Whiting writes that "in addition to agreeing upon the fundamental points of theology, demonology, cosmography and morality, Burton and Milton condemn war and military glory."<ref>{{Cite book |last=george wesley whiting |url=https://archive.org/details/miltonsliterarym0000geor |title=milton's literary milieu |date=1939 |publisher=the university of north carolina press |others=Internet Archive}}</ref> "Il Penseroso" (and its companion poem "[[L'Allegro]]") contrasts melancholy with [[Happiness|mirth]] in a similar way to Burton's distinction between "bad" melancholy and "good" melancholy.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Grace |first=William J. |date=1955 |title=Notes on Robert Burton and John Milton |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4173147?seq=2 |journal=Studies in Philology |volume=52 |issue=4 |pages=578–591 |issn=0039-3738}}</ref>

=== Samuel Johnson ===
{{Quote box
| quote = "If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle," one of Johnson's most famous quotes, is adapted from <i>Anatomy</i>. The full quote reads: "The great direction Burton has left to men disordered like you, is this, Be not solitary; be not idle: which I would thus modify; – If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle."
| author = 
| align = right
| width = 50%
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Writer [[Samuel Johnson]] called ''Anatomy'' "a valuable work," saying "there is a great spirit and great power in what Burton says."<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Beveridge |first=Allan |date=September 2013 |title=Talking about madness and melancholy: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric-treatment/article/talking-about-madness-and-melancholy-boswells-life-of-samuel-johnson/08DCB582472A7D4E6482DC444D6E4DBC |journal=Advances in Psychiatric Treatment |language=en |volume=19 |issue=5 |pages=392–398 |doi=10.1192/apt.bp.112.010702 |issn=1355-5146}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Dunea |first1=G. |year=2007 |title=The Anatomy of Melancholy |journal=BMJ: British Medical Journal |volume=335 |issue=7615 |pages=351.2–351 |doi=10.1136/bmj.39301.684363.59 |pmc=1949452}}</ref> Johnson suffered from bouts of "horrible melancholia" and at one point "strongly entertained thoughts of suicide" according to his biographer [[James Boswell]].<ref>[[Walter Jackson Bate|Bate, Walter Jackson]] (1977), ''Samuel Johnson'', New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, {{ISBN|978-0-15-179260-3}}</ref> Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that writers such as himself were especially predisposed to melancholy.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance. - Free Online Library |url=https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Melancholy,+Genius,+and+Utopia+in+the+Renaissance.-a015674136 |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=www.thefreelibrary.com}}</ref> Most of his attempted remedies for his own depression came from treatments prescribed by ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''. Chief among these was "constant occupation of mind"; Johnson found that staying busy helped ward off melancholy, which was a significant reason his writing was so prolific.<ref name=":6" /> He described ''Anatomy'' as "the only book that ever got him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise."<ref>{{cite book |last=Boswell |first=James |author-link=James Boswell |title=[[The Life of Samuel Johnson]] |publisher=[[Everyman's Library]] |page=390}}</ref>

=== Laurence Sterne ===
In 1798, [[John Ferriar]] published the paper ''Illustrations of Sterne'', which pointed out that [[Laurence Sterne|Laurence Sterne's]] 1759 novel ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]'' used passages from ''Anatomy'' [[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman#Artistic incorporation and accusations of plagiarism|almost word for word]].<ref name="FerriarGravity" /><ref name="Petrie70">Petrie (1970) pp. 261–262.</ref>''<ref>Petrie (1970) pp. 261–66.</ref>'' Sterne also took sections from ''[[Essays (Francis Bacon)|Of Death]]'' by [[Francis Bacon]] and several other books.<ref name="Petrie70" /> Besides copying text, Sterne referenced Burton's book divisions in the titles of his chapters, and he parodied his account of [[Cicero|Cicero's]] grief for the death of his daughter [[Tullia (daughter of Cicero)|Tullia]].<ref name="FerriarGravity" /> These accusations of [[plagiarism]] further fueled the revived interest in Burton's work at the turn of the 19th century.<ref name=":3" />

=== John Keats ===
The [[Romanticism|Romantic]] English poet [[John Keats]] considered ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' his favorite book.<ref>{{Citation |last=White |first=Robert |title=Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy: Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems (1820) |date=2022-03-24 |work=Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy |url=https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781474480475/html?lang=en |access-date=2025-05-01 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |language=en |doi=10.1515/9781474480475/html?lang=en |isbn=978-1-4744-8047-5}}</ref> Keats was a Romanticist with poetic views of the human body and emotions, as well as a [[surgeon]] trained in medicine and physiology. [[Literary criticism|Literary scholar]] Robert White argues that this duality made Keats unique among Burton's 19th-century audience: "Keats was the only one to have a professional foot in both fields and could read it as both a poet, and as a doctor professionally aware of its historical medical context."<ref name=":4" /> He also suffered from [[Major depressive episode|depressive episodes]] for much of his life, saying in an 1817 letter that "I scarcely remember counting upon any happiness."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Grogan |first=Suzie |date=2015-09-28 |title='Moods of my own Mind': Keats, melancholy, and mental health |url=https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2015/09/28/moods-of-my-own-mind-keats-melancholy-and-mental-health/ |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=Wordsworth Grasmere |language=en-GB}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Wayback Machine |url=https://www.artlit.info/pdfs/Keatsian-Anatomy-Melancholy.pdf |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20231117042039/https://www.artlit.info/pdfs/Keatsian-Anatomy-Melancholy.pdf |archive-date=2023-11-17 |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=www.artlit.info}}</ref>

During his highly productive period of 1819, Keats read and reread Burton's ''Anatomy.''<ref>{{Cite web |title=R. S. White, Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy: Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems (1820) |url=https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/epdf/10.3366/rom.2024.0635 |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=www.euppublishing.com |language=en |doi=10.3366/rom.2024.0635}}</ref> He owned a copy of the 11th edition (1813), which he heavily annotated. He put [[Exclamation mark|exclamation marks]] next to passages about solutions for heartache and underlined the phrase "The last and best Cure of Love-Melancholy, is to let them have their Desire."<ref name=":4" /> On the blank page at the end of the book Keats created his own [[Index (publishing)|index]] of passages he liked; these were mostly love stories or descriptions of [[Tyrant|tyrants]].<ref name=":4" /> One of his marked sections of ''Anatomy'' told the story of star-crossed Corinthian lovers [[Lamia|Lycius and Lamia]] — he later adapted Burton's retelling of the tale into his 1819 poem "[[Lamia (poem)|Lamia]]."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Keats |first=John |title=Lamia |url=https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2490/pg2490-images.html |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=Project Gutenberg |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Lamia {{!}} Romanticism, Ode, Mythology {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lamia-poem-by-Keats |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> 

The final book Keats published during his lifetime, ''Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems'' (1820), is influenced throughout by ''Anatomy'', which was "the book which has been his companion during 1819."<ref name=":4" /> His poem "[[Ode on Melancholy]]" also heavily incorporates themes from ''Anatomy.''<ref name=":4" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Dalli |first=Elise |date=2016-05-15 |title=Ode on Melancholy by John Keats |url=https://poemanalysis.com/john-keats/ode-on-melancholy/ |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=Poem Analysis |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== Philip Pullman ===
In April 2005, English author [[Philip Pullman]] published an essay in ''[[The Daily Telegraph|The Telegraph]]'' about his love for Burton's ''Anatomy''.<ref name=":7">{{Cite news |last=Pullman |first=Philip |date=10 April 2005 |title=Reasons to be cheerful |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3640566/Reasons-to-be-cheerful.html |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210104194843/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3640566/Reasons-to-be-cheerful.html |archive-date=4 January 2021 |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]}}</ref> He argues that the 400-year-old book is worth looking past its convoluted nature:
{{Quote|text="This book is very long. What's more, like the book [[Alice in Wonderland|Alice's sister]] was reading on that famous summer afternoon, it has no pictures or conversation in it. To add to the drawbacks, parts of it are in Latin. And finally, as if that wasn't bad enough, it is founded on totally outdated notions of anatomy, physiology, psychology, cosmology and just about every other -logy there ever was. So what on earth makes it worth reading today? And not only worth reading, but a glorious and intoxicating and endlessly refreshing reward for reading? The main reason is perhaps the least literary. It's that <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i> is the revelation of a [[personality]]: a personality so vivid and generous, so humorous, so humane, so tolerant and cranky and wise, so filled with bizarre knowledge and so rich in absurd and touching anecdotes, that an hour in his company is a stimulant to the soul."|author=Philip Pullman|title="Reasons to be cheerful"|source=<i>The Telegraph</i>}}
Pullman has cited it as his favorite book on other occasions and lives near Burton's hometown of [[Oxford]].<ref name=":8">Pullman, Philip (31 August 2008). "Author lists his favorite books". ''[[Oxford Mail]]''.</ref> He claims that "Burton's humanity blows like a gale," saying "his very language sparkles" as he describes medical treatments and scenes from history.<ref name=":7" /> It's listed among the books that influenced his own writing, such as his trilogy ''[[His Dark Materials]].<ref name=":8" />'' 
{{Quote|text="Is the book in any sense a cure for melancholy? Our word "depression" has always seemed to me far too [[genteel]], too decorous for this savage and merciless torment. Anything that can palliate it is worth knowing; and certainly no disorder has ever had so rich, so funny, so subtle and so eccentric an anatomy. We can learn much from his psychology."|author=Philip Pullman|title="Reasons to be cheerful"|source=<i>The Telegraph</i>}}

== Notes ==
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{{Reflist}}

== References ==
* [[John Ferriar|Ferriar, John]] (1798) ''[https://archive.org/details/cu31924013199850 Illustrations of Sterne]''
* [[Graham Petrie (writer)|Petrie, Graham]] (1970) ''[https://www.jstor.org/pss/3723527 A Rhetorical Topic in "Tristram Shandy"]'', [[Modern Language Review]], Vol. 65, No. 2, April 1970, pp.&nbsp;261–66

== Further reading ==
* Edward W. Adams (1896). [https://archive.org/stream/gentlemansmagaz235unkngoog#page/n46/mode/2up "Robert Burton and the 'Anatomy of Melancholy',"] ''The Gentleman's Magazine,'' Vol. CCLXXXI, pp.&nbsp;46–53
* {{cite news |title=Remedial Reading: ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' by Robert Burton, introduction by William H. Gass |author=William Monahan |date=Fall 2001 |publisher=[[Bookforum]] |url=http://bookforum.com/archive/fall_01/monahan.html |access-date=14 April 2007 |author-link=William Monahan }} The introduction by author [[William H. Gass]] runs just under 10 pages
* Mary Ann Lund (2010). [http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/renaissance-and-early-modern-literature/melancholy-medicine-and-religion-early-modern-england-reading-anatomy-melancholy "Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''"]. [[Cambridge University Press]]
* Susan Wells (2019). ''Robert Burton's Rhetoric: An Anatomy of Early Modern Knowledge.'' [[Pennsylvania State University Press]] {{OCLC|1128273048}} {{ISBN|978-0-271-08467-1}}

== External links ==

=== Online editions ===
* ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=cPgveWnCdRcC The 1638 edition]'' on [[Google Books]]
* {{gutenberg|no=10800|name=The Anatomy of Melancholy}}
* [http://www.exclassics.com/anatomy/anatint.htm ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''] Online reading and multiple ebook formats at Ex-classics
* [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?type=simple&c=moa&sid=68ad62caf649dd14&q1=Anatomy%20of%20Melancholy&rgn=full%20text&firstpubl1=1800&firstpubl2=1925&view=header&cc=moa&idno=ACM8939.0001.001 ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''] at [[Making of America]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051216201453/http://www.psyplexus.com/burton/ ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''] at PsyPlexus
* [https://archive.org/details/anatomyofmelanch00burt ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''] at [[Internet Archive]] – scan of 1896 edition
* [https://librivox.org/group/515 ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''] at [[LibriVox]] (public domain audiobooks)

=== Discussions of the book ===
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010y30m "The Anatomy of Melancholy" ''In Our Time'' episode] from [[BBC Radio 4]]
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j1jq The New Anatomy of Melancholy] – BBC Radio 4 exploration and modern extrapolation
* [http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/divphil/burtonr.htm ''The Complete Review'' discussion] of ''The Anatomy of Melancholy''

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[[Category:1621 books]]
[[Category:Works about melancholia]]
[[Category:Books about depression]]
[[Category:History of mental health in the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:NYRB Classics]]
[[Category:Medical textbooks]]
[[Category:Philosophy books]]