1785, ISBN: 57e150be2fd1cde4985d506e90f6ff2a

London: B. Blake, 13, Bell Yard, Tmple Bar. , 1836. Original half brown calf with original period spine and end papers professionally relaid retaining 90% of original spine. Marbled boar… Meer...

London: B. Blake, 13, Bell Yard, Tmple Bar. , 1836. Original half brown calf with original period spine and end papers professionally relaid retaining 90% of original spine. Marbled boards and endsheets. Frontispiece with negligible dampstaining, also to flyleaf. Previous owner's name on flyleaf and another owner's stamped name also on same. 744 pages. Overall FAIR PLUS condition. Digital photos upon request. The Anatomy of Melancholy (Full title The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Historically, Opened and Cut up.) is a book written by Robert Burton which was first published 1621. The book is, on its surface, a medical textbook in which Burton applies his large and varied learning in the Scholastic manner to the subject of melancholia. Each section piles on ancient and mediæval medical authorities, from Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen forward, and adds to these ancient examples a great deal of Latin poetry. Burton defines his subject this way: Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In disposition, is that transitory Melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dulness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill-disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality....This Melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, a serious ailment, a settled humour, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed: and as it was long increasing, so, now being (pleasant or painful) grown to a habit, it will hardly be removed. Over the course of the book, Burton draws from nearly every science of his day, including psychology, physiology, astronomy, astrology, demonology, meteorology, and theology. In fact, much of the book consists of quotations from various authorities, and Burton fills the Anatomy with more or less pertinent references to the works of others. The Anatomy of Melancholy is a particularly lengthy book. The first edition, printed as a single quarto volume, was nearly 900 pages long, and subsequent editions only added to that total. The text is partitioned into three major sections plus an introduction, each arranged in Burton's sprawling style. characteristically, the introduction includes not only an author's note (titled "Democritus Junior to the Reader"), but also a Latin poem ("Democritus Junior to His Book"), a warning to "The Reader Who Employs His Leisure Ill", an abstract of the following text, and another poem explaining the frontispiece. The following three sections proceed in a similarly exhaustive fashion: the first section focuses on the causes and symptoms of "common" melancholies, while the second section deals with cures for melancholy, and the third section explores more complex and esoteric melancholies, including the melancholy of lovers and all varieties of religious melancholies. The Anatomy concludes with an extensive index (which, many years later, The New York Times Book Review called "a readerly pleasure in itself".); additionally, most modern editions of the book are supplemented with many pages of explanatory notes for the reader. Throughout the book, Burton's digressive and inclusive style, often verging on a stream of consciousness, consistently informs and animates the text. Though nominally a medical book, the Anatomy is "vitalized by (Burton's) pervading humour" and is as much a sui generis work of literature as it is a scientific or philosophical text. The Anatomy of Melancholy has been admired by many subsequent writers, from Samuel Johnson, Charles Lamb and John Keats (who professed it to be his favourite book) to Stanley Fish, Philip Pullman, and Jorge Luis Borges (who used a quote as an epigraph to his story "The Library of Babel"). Despite its age, The Anatomy of Melancholy is still considered an enduring, if eccentric, literary classic by many modern critics. UncleAndy. Seventh Edition. Half Calf Leather. Fair. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hardcover., B. Blake, 13, Bell Yard, Tmple Bar., 1836, 2, London, Printed for W. Lewis in Russel-Street..., 1785. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 200 x 124 mms., pp. [xi], 461 462 blank, 463 errata, 464 blank], contemporary mottled calf, gilt spine; lacks label, top and base of spine chipped, front joint amateurishly repaired. This collected edition of the works of Hildebrand Jacob (1693 - 1739) was dedicated to James, Earl of Waldegrave, and includes poems during his lifetime, the best-known of which was the rather lubricious poem, The Curious Maid. Jacob states that he published the book because incorrect copies had been circulated, and because he wished to convince his friends that he was not the author of ''some, perhaps, less pardonable Productions that were laid to my charge here at home while I had the advantage of living under your Lordship''s protection abroad.'' In the essay, ''How the Mind is rais''d to the Sublime,'' Jacob shows himself to have been an enthusiastic admirer of Milton. �, London, Printed for W. Lewis in Russel-Street..., 1785, 0<