Anatomy of Melancholy is absolutely marvellous. I was determined to read it although at times I wondered why I was putting myself through it. The beginning (the first few hundred pages) is a bit dry, to put it mildly… but then it explodes into the most entertaining of reads. Burtons moods come down through the centuries, sometimes he feels angry, sometimes melancholy, sometimes puritanical and most frequently, lascivious and jovial. Lascivious is one of his favourite words it seems!

He loves talking about ….ummmm wind! Not the weather type. He is a master in the art of digression, a lot of the time he veers so far from his topic you thank the stars he isn’t giving a lecture in a one hour timetable slot. But the digressions are the best part. He veers off to talk about plumbing, climate, skin colour, geography, why stars shine, earth science, astronomy and the jealousy of crocodiles…etc etc (etc being another of his favourite words)…it is wonderful. It is probably the first stream of consciousness writing.

Best not read if you can’t handle lots of sex and sexual anatomy talk, he does write those sections in Latin, but the penguin edition does kindly translate them.

My favourite section was the ‘Symptoms of Love Melancholy’. And the ‘Cures of Love Melancholy, section made me laugh til I cried. One cure being to hurl yourself headlong off a cliff.
Best not read if fiercely anti feminist ideas upset you. Well, they do me but I can accept times were very different and it wasn’t great even then.

Marriage is a sometimes a cure for unwed melancholy because a wife can.. for example….
‘hold the candle whilst their husbands meditate and write’ (oh lucky wife)


My very favourite paragraph deals with a cure for jealousy

‘One other sovereign remedy I could repeat, an especial Antidote against jealousy, an excellent cure, but I am not now disposed to tell it, not that like a covetous Empiric I conceal it for any gain, but some other reasons, I am not willing to publish it; if you be desirous to know it, when I meet you next, I will per adventure tell you what it is in your ear. This is the best counsel I can give’

The book has thousands of references to other writers through history. It is utterly impossible to follow them all up… but I would say it helps to have read at least some Homer, Virgil’s Aeneid and maybe Ovid… but it is not imperative.

I didn’t enjoy the last section, Religious Melancholy… it was boring.. but that is my only complaint

All in all, I will never read this in its entirety again, but it was a hoot.. and I have so many post it notes for sections I loved. I will dip into it again and again.