[BURTON, Robert.] The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, & severall cures of it […] by Democritus Junior […] The Second edition, corrected and augmented by the Author.

[BURTON, Robert.] The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, & severall cures of it […] by Democritus Junior […] The Second edition, corrected and augmented by the Author.All the Learning of the Age as Well as its Humour and Its Pedantry Are There [BURTON, Robert.] The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, & severall cures of it [] by Democritus Junior [] The Second edition, corrected and augmented by the Author. Oxford: John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps. 1624. Folio. Twentieth century full brown mottled morocco, boards triple filleted in blind, raised

‘All the Learning of the Age as Well as its Humour – and Its Pedantry – Are There’

[BURTON, Robert.] The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, & severall cures of it […] by Democritus Junior […] The Second edition, corrected and augmented by the Author. Oxford: John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps. 1624.

Folio. Twentieth-century full brown mottled morocco, boards triple-filleted in blind, raised bands, spine blind-filleted in compartments with central gilt floral ornaments; pp. [4], 64; [4], 188, [4], 189–332, [2], 333–379, 370–557, [7]; a–g4 h6 A–Z4 2A–2Z4 3A–3Z4 4A–4D4; printer’s device of the University of Oxford to title, woodcut initials and headpieces, printed marginalia; paperflaw to f. E4 with resultant closed L-shaped marginal tear at foot (touching text but without loss), occasional spots, light marginal dampstaining to last three quires, small rust mark to f. 3P3 with minute hole touching two characters; occasional early underlining, early manicules to 2 pp., minute later marginal marks in pink ink to first few pp.; occasional spots, and a few small marks in pink ink, else bright and clean; a very good copy.

The first folio edition, and second edition overall (first 1621), of one of the most influential and intellectually ambitious works in English literature, at once a medical treatise on melancholy, a philosophical compendium, and a vast literary commonplace book.

Robert Burton (1577–1640), scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, first published the Anatomy in 1621 in quarto, under the pseudonym of ‘Democritus Junior’, an allusion to the ancient Greek ‘laughing philosopher’. Himself prone to melancholia, Burton explains in ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’, ‘I write of Melancholy, by being busie to avoid Melancholy’ (p. 4). What begins ostensibly as a medical enquiry expands into a work of remarkable encyclopaedic breadth, drawing together material from classical, medieval, and contemporary authorities across medicine, philosophy, theology, cosmology, and natural science.

The Anatomy catalogues with remarkable thoroughness the causes, symptoms, and varieties of melancholy, whether arising from love, study (with a ‘digression on the misery of schollers’), religion, witchcraft (with side effects of ‘dried up womens pappes’ vomiting pieces of iron or lead, and one victim speaking ‘such Languages as he had never beene taught’), or imagination, while also proposing a correspondingly wide range of remedies. At the same time, it offers a rich record of contemporary intellectual life and reveals Burton’s delight in English literature, with extracts from Shakespeare, Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, and Florio’s Montaigne. In composing it, Burton followed the counsel offered at its close to those threatened by the disease – ‘be not idle’ (p. 293) – and the result is a work whose very profusion of learning may be read as an antidote to the condition it anatomises.

A notable publishing success, the Anatomy appeared in eight editions (with additional issues) between 1621 and 1676, seven of which in folio. The present edition marks a decisive stage in its development: not only is it the first to be issued in folio, but it represents a substantial enlargement of the work, expanding it by roughly one-fifth, from some 880 pages in quarto to 652 pages in the considerably larger format. Here Burton introduced, for the first time, his characteristically idiosyncratic index. Far from a purely utilitarian finding aid, it offers a revealing glimpse into the author’s habits of thought and self-presentation. Among its entries Burton includes himself – ‘Burton, Robert (Democritus Junior), silent, sedentary, solitary, i. 17; no traveler, 18; bold to imitate, 20; offended with M. [melancholy], 21, 22, 35 […] grateful to patrons, 189 […]’ – a pleasingly ironic gesture which encapsulates the reflexive and often playful nature of the work.

The Anatomy was ‘one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century. All the learning of the age as well as its humour – and its pedantry – are there. It has something in common with Brant’s Ship of Fools, Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, and More’s Utopia, with Rabelais and Montaigne, and like all these it exercised a considerable influence on the thought of the time’ (Printing and the Mind of Man). A favourite book of Samuel Johnson, he famously told Boswell that this was ‘the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise’ (Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 438).

An early owner of our copy has added manicules to the section on religious melancholy, particularly to Burton’s condemnation of those who are over-zealous in countering ‘Romish ceremonies and superstitions’, and ‘will quite demolish all, they will admit no […] kneeling at Communion, no Church musicke […] No not so much as degrees some of them will tolerate, or Universities, all humane learning’ (pp. 524–5).

ESTC S122247; Jordan-Smith 2; Madan 521. See Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791); Printing and the Mind of Man 120.

SKU: 2123934