The Anatomy of Melancholy

The best book ever written, according to Nicholas Lezard of the 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 suffered throughout his life. Ranging over beauty, digestion, the planets, alcohol, goblins, kissing, poetry, and the restorative power of books, among many other topics, The Anatomy of Melancholy has fascinated figures from Samuel Johnson to Jorge Luis Borges since the seventeenth century. It remains an incomparable examination of the human condition in all its flawed, endless variety. Edited with an introduction by Angus Gowland.