The PuritanBoard - View Single Post - Robert Burton -The Anatomy of Melancholy

bookslover · #4 (**permalink**) 04-26-2008, 08:51 PM

I have two editions of this book: (1) a reprint published in 1938 by Tudor Publishing Company in New York; a hardback of 1,036 pages; and (2) a paperback edition published by the New York Review of Books imprint in 2001, with 1,382 pages.

Robert Burton (born: Lindley, England on February 8, 1577; died: Oxford, England on January 25, 1640, aged 62) "was born in Leicestershire and educated at Oxford [BD, 1614] where he became librarian of Christ's Church College, a position he held for life. He was also the [Anglican] vicar of St. Thomas, Oxford, and rector of Seabrave, Leicestershire. The first edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy appeared in 1621 and was an immediate popular success. Burton continued to revise and add to this great book, which went through a further five editions, until his death." (Quoting from the paperback version.)

Continuing: "One of the major documents of modern European civilization, Robert Burton's outstanding compendium, a survey not only of melancholy in all its myriad forms but also of humanity's endless efforts to assuage it, has invited nothing but superlatives since its publication in the early seventeenth century. Llewelyn Powys called it "the greatest work of prose of the greatest period of English prose-writing," while the celebrated surgeon Sir Willian Osler pronounced it one of the very greatest of medical treatises. And Dr. Johnson, Boswell reports, declared it was "the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise."

I haven't read all of it, but I've read in it. In the same way that Joseph Caryl's 12-volume commentary on the Book of Job explores every nook and cranny of Scripture and ranges over the entirety of systematic theology while expositing Job, so Burton's book ranges over a vast number of subjects and personages throughout history in its explanation and description of cures for depression (melancholia).

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, the greatest literary critic and author of the 18th century), again: "Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is a valuable work. It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. But there is great spirit and great power in what Burton says, when he writes from his own mind." The book had been through 5 editions by Burton's death (1640); it had been through 9 editions by Johnson's day.

Today, one would read the book mostly for entertainment, what with the advances in modern science regarding the treatment of depression. Yet, I would not be surprised to see some practical advice that is still valid.

On the subject of spiritual depression, I'd recommend Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1965). It's based on a series of sermons Lloyd-Jones preached on this subject at Westminster Chapel in the early 1950s, and it's still in print.