The Anatomy of Melancholy, what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognostics, and several cures of it. ... The Sixteenth Editon, printed from the authorized copy of 1651, with the author's last corrections, additions. &c &c.
London: B. Blake, 1838. Large octavo, full leather binding, gilt lettering and decorated rules to spine, blindstamped design in panels to spine, gilt stamped rule and blindstamped decoration to borders of boards, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled, engraved frontispiece (based on the famous frontispiece of 1628 with numerous illustrated panels) "drawn and engraved expressly for this edition" by C. Freeman, pp viii, 743. Rubbed to the head and foot of the spine, some rubbing to edges, some off-setting to frontispiece from tissue-guard. Small inscription (nineteenth century) 'Edwin Palmer for H.W. Fisher' to the reverse of the front free endpaper. Very good condition.
Robert Burton's seventeenth-century classic was first published in 1621. The work overwent considerable expansions and revisions during the author's lifetime, but this edition is taken from its final form. The work is on its surface a quasi-medical text dealing with "melancholia" (depression), but overall it is an encyclopedic, often comic approach to life, philosophy and literature. Burton wrote it under the pseudonym Democritus Junior as a reference to the Ancient Greek "laughing philosopher" Democritus. A review of a recent reprint described the work as "Made out of all the books that existed in a 17th-century library, it was compiled in order to explain and account for all human emotion and thought." This is a handsomely bound 1838 edition in excellent condition. Item #105956
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