A portion of the frontispiece in the 1638 edition of Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy." Wikimedia Commons These days we believe we are living in exceptional times.

The Oxford scholar Robert Burton published his 2000-page treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy in the early 17th century. The book has been described as encyclopedic—an extraordinary combination of ...

In the background recorded voices deliver snippets of observation on the state of melancholy. To be ill at ease, according to Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melanchol y, was quite literally to be in a ...

Based on "the greatest book ever written", The Anatomy of Melancholy provides the perfect cure to the ailment: laughter. Robert Burton's "self-help manual", written nearly 400 years ago, addresses the ...