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The Anatomy of Melancholy — Robert Burton

The Anatomy of Melancholy

Robert Burton

  • Essays
  • Book language: English
  • 1529 pages

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is a sprawling essayistic work first published in 1621. Burton examines melancholy—its causes, symptoms, and cures—while digressing widely into human nature, customs, and learning. It is worth listening to for its rich, humane, and thoughtful prose, which blends medicine, philosophy, and literature.

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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).

Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.

Opening of the book

This edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy is based on a nineteenthcentury edition that modernized Burton's spelling and typographic conventions. In preparing this electronic version, it became evident that the editor had made a variety of mistakes in this modernization: some words were left in their original spelling (unusual words were a particular problem), portions of book titles were mistaken for proper names, proper names were mistaken for book titles or Latin words, etc. A certain number of misprints were also introduced into the Latin.

As a result, I have re-edited the text, checking it against images of the

1638 edition, and correcting all errors not present in the earlier edition. I have continued to follow the general editorial practice of the base text for quotation marks, italics, etc. Rare words have been normalized according to their primary spelling in the Oxford English

Dictionary. When Burton spells a person's name in several ways, I have normalized the names to the most common spelling, or to modern practice if well-known. In a few cases, mistakes present in both the 1683 edition and the base text have been corrected. These are always minor reference errors (e.g., an incorrect or missing section number in the synopses, or misnumbered footnotes). Incorrect citations to other texts (Burton seems to quote by memory and sometimes gets it wrong) have not been changed if they are wrong in both editions. To display some symbols (astrological signs, etc.) the

HTML version requires a browser with unicode support. Most recent browsers should be OK.—KTH

FRONTISPIECE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

1. Democritus Abderites 2. Zelotypia 3. Solitudo 4. Inamorato 5.

Hypocondriacus 6. Superstitiosus 7. Maniacus 8. Borage 9. Hellebor

10. Democritus Junior THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it. In three Partitions, with their several Sections, numbers, and subsections. Philosophically, medicinally, Historically, opened and cut up. By Democritus Junior With a Satyrical Preface conducing to the following Discourse. The Sixth Edition, corrected and augmented by the Author. Omne tulit punctum, qui miscit utile dulce. London

Printed & to be sold by Hen. Crips & Lodo Lloyd at their shop in

Popes-head Alley. 1652">

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Contents

  1. ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY,
  2. DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER.

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