Robert Burton

Robert Burton (1577–1640) was an English scholar and clergyman who spent nearly his whole adult life at Christ Church, Oxford, as a student and later as librarian, holding in addition a couple of modest livings. He had, he said, lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life among books, and the result was The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621 and enlarged through five further editions, a treatise on his own affliction that became an encyclopedia of learning and a classic of English prose. Under the name Democritus Junior he also wrote a Latin comedy, Philosophaster.