Robert Burton (1577–1640) was born in Leicestershire, entered Oxford in 1593, and became a student (fellow) of Christ Church in 1599, where he remained for the rest of his life as tutor and librarian, also serving as vicar of St Thomas's, Oxford. He never married or travelled, and described himself as a lifelong sufferer from the melancholy he studied. He spent some thirty years enlarging the Anatomy, published under the name Democritus Junior, and left his large library to the Bodleian and Christ Church.
The Anatomy of Melancholy presents itself as a medical treatise, laid out in the scholastic manner of partitions, sections, members and subsections, on 'what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it'. It is also an encyclopedia of Renaissance learning, a compendium of quotation from more than a thousand authors, a satire on human folly, and a consolation for its author and readers.
