The Anatomy of Melancholy

Author: Burton, Robert

Literature & literary studies

Published on 6 July 2023 by Penguin Books Ltd (Penguin Classics) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 1376 pages
152 x 232 x 58 | 1220g

'The best book ever written' Nicholas Lezard, GuardianRobert 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