58 Facts About Robert Burton

Robert Burton was an English writer and fellow of Oxford University, best known for his encyclopedic book The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Robert Burton received an MA and BD, and by 1607 was qualified as a tutor.

From as early as 1603, Robert Burton indulged early literary interests at Oxford, including some Latin poems, a now-lost play performed before and panned by King James I himself, and his only surviving play: an academic satire called Philosophaster.

Whatever his popularity, Robert Burton has always attracted distinguished readers, including Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, John Keats, William Osler, and Samuel Beckett.

Robert Burton was the second of four sons and fourth of ten children; his elder brother, William, is the only member of the family for whom we know more than minor biographical details, as he later became a noted antiquarian and topographer.

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Some biographers, such as Michael O'Connell and J B Bamborough, have cited this as evidence Burton suffered some lengthy illness while a student, possibly melancholy.

When he entered Christ Church in 1599, Wood reports Robert Burton was assigned the tutor of John Bancroft, "for form sake, tho' he wanted not a tutor"; though Bancroft was only three years his senior, he was six or seven years ahead of Robert Burton in his studies, and was well-connected within the church, later becoming the Bishop of Oxford.

Simultaneously, Robert Burton rose through the college ranks, attaining disciplus in 1599, philosophus secundi vicenarii in 1603, and philosophus primi vicenarii in 1607, the last of which qualified him as a tutor.

The college statutes required Robert Burton to take a BD after his MA, and Robert Burton chose not to proceed to DD.

In 1603, on the accession of James I, Robert Burton contributed a short Latin verse celebrating the event to a commemorative Oxford volume; he made similar offering of twenty-one poems upon James's royal Oxford visit in 1605.

On this visit, Robert Burton took active part in the "praeparation for the Kinges cominge", including a play he composed for the occasion.

However Robert Burton reacted to this royal pan, he was already at work on another play by 1606.

Robert Burton likely took a view towards pleasing the administration in this production.

Robert Burton initially struggled to find any patrons for promotion out of the university, but after some time, he managed to obtain an ecclesiastical office in the living of St Thomas the Martyr's Church, Oxford, located in the western suburb of Oxford.

Robert Burton held this vicarage at St Thomas's, until his death; he was responsible for the building or rebuilding of the church's south porch in 1621, where his arms were placed on the gable.

Robert Burton chose not to reside in Walesby, though he probably visited it at some point.

Robert Burton took little interest in the daily affairs of the parish—all the parish records were signed by his curate, Thomas Benson—but did win for it nine acres of land which had been taken by Frances's predecessor.

In 1632, shortly after this resignation from Walesby, Robert Burton was presented to a much more valuable office by his patron, Lord Berkeley: the rectorship of Seagrave.

Robert Burton did not cultivate much of a reputation as a preacher while at Seagrave, choosing not to publish any of his sermons, but discharged the pastoral and charitable roles of the rectory dutifully and punctually.

Robert Burton probably visited Lindley often while at Seagrave, as the villages were only 20 miles apart.

Robert Burton seems to have been, at first, unhappy with this situation; in the 1621 edition of the Anatomy, Robert Burton wrote that his "hopes were still frustrate, and I left behind, as a Dolphin on shore, confined to my Colledge, as Diogenes to his tubbe".

Robert Burton did not spend all his time in this "Vaticanish retirement" as a scholar.

On three occasions–in 1615, 1617, and 1618–Robert Burton was chosen to be the clerk of the Market, one of two MA students tasked with regulating the various goods of Oxford's markets.

Robert Burton left no record of when he began his work on the Anatomy.

Robert Burton explicitly states that the study of melancholy was a lifelong fascination of his, and regularly "deducted from the main channel of my studies".

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Robert Burton's subject was well chosen; similar treatises by Timothie Bright and Thomas Wright had gone through several editions soon after their publication.

Robert Burton printed the Anatomy under the pseudonym of "Democritus Junior", alluding to the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, Democritus, sometimes known as the Laughing Philosopher.

The use of an established classical figure in a pseudonym was common practice in Robert Burton's time, used to ensure the reader held no negative preconceptions about the author.

Robert Burton did not resolutely stick to this pseudonymity; the first edition betrayed it as he signed the "Conclusion to the Reader" with his real name, and though this was removed in later editions, the portrait of Robert Burton added from the third edition onwards hardly preserved his anonymity.

Robert Burton did not rest on his laurels after the first printing, continually editing and improving the work throughout his life.

The first edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy was, with marginalia, over 350, 000 words long; by his final edition this count came to over 500, 000.

Shortly before his death in 1640, Robert Burton entrusted an annotated copy of the Anatomy to his publisher, which was published posthumously in 1651.

Robert Burton laid out several smaller monetary donations: those to his servants; the servants at Christ Church; the poor in Seagrave, Nuneaton, and Higham; the library at Brasenose; and various friends and colleagues, including John Bancroft.

Angus Gowland, in his 2006 study of Robert Burton, is among the few who take the allegation seriously, though he admits it is "no more than a melancholy rumour".

Robert Burton rejected the endorsements of suicide by classical authors in the Anatomy, and if the rumours were taken to have any veracity after his death, Robert Burton would not have been buried in Christ Church cathedral.

The book is the fruit of a lifetime's worth of learning, though Robert Burton emphasised in the Anatomy that erudition is ultimately pointless, and that it is perhaps better to remain ignorant.

Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy largely to write himself out of being a lifelong sufferer from depression.

For Robert Burton, "melancholy" describes a range of mental abnormalities, from obsession to delusion to what we would now call clinical depression.

Robert Burton borrows episodes from contemporary academic satires—dealing with the perennial feuds between town and gown, the distinction between "true" and "false" scholars, the ridicule of pedants—and characters from humanist satirists, chiefly Erasmus and Giovanni Pontano.

The play's depiction of alchemy bears some passing resemblance to Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist, but Robert Burton takes strains to point out in the introduction to a manuscript that his play was written before the first staging of Jonson's play, in 1610.

Robert Burton's philosophasters are joined by the representatives of Roman Catholicism, including scholastics and Jesuits, in their mockery of philosophy and the university.

Robert Burton was no doubt an active part in the non-academic daily life of Oxford, through his university-appointed roles in its church and market life, and Bamborough adds that in his day he "was known as a mathematician and as both an astrologer and an astronomer, and even had some reputation as a surveyor".

Gowland has suggested the Robert Burton family had some Catholic sympathies, because of their close relation to Jesuit Arthur Faunt.

Faunt's godson and Robert Burton's brother, William, spoke admiringly of Faunt as "a man of great learning, gravity and wisdome"; William was a vigorous supporter of Laudian reforms in his home county, siding with High Church Anglicanism, which was sometimes seen as Catholic-sympathising and at St Thomas's, Robert Burton was apparently one of the last few 17th-century Church of England priests to use unleavened wafers in the Communion, an outmoded Laudian practice.

However, as an Oxford scholar, Robert Burton could have taken a personal dislike to Archbishop Laud; as the Chancellor there from 1630 to 1641, Laud was in perpetual squabbles with its body of scholars, which would not endear him to Robert Burton.

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Robert Burton was an apparent supporter of James I's anti-Catholic measures, listed among those at Christ Church who took his Oath of Allegiance.

Robert Burton claimed part of his reasoning in not proceeding to a DD was his reluctance to participate in the endless argument surrounding religion, for which he "saw no such great neede".

Robert Burton owned 1738 books in total, tenfold the library of a typical Oxford don, though not as vast as those of some other contemporary humanist scholars.

Robert Burton accumulated the collection over a forty-six year period, from 1594 to 1640.

Robert Burton seems to have been uncomfortable reading outside these two primary languages; he owned only a handful of titles in Italian, German, Spanish, and Hebrew, and none in Greek, the last despite his humanist reputation and the recurring Grecian references in the Anatomy.

Robert Burton owned hundreds of cheap pamphlets, satires, and popular plays: all works which had been excluded from the recently founded Bodleian Library, perhaps why Burton felt the need to purchase them.

Robert Burton was an avid annotator of books, with marginal notes in around one-fifth of his books, from the tangential to the bluntly hostile.

Robert Burton's library was divided between the Bodleian and Christ Church libraries after his death.

In 1964, Christ Church Library disassembled Osler's Robert Burton collection, moving the books to the Archiva Superiora on the second floor.

Robert Burton's Anatomy was an extremely popular work in Robert Burton's lifetime, and throughout the 17th century, going through eight editions from 1621 to 1676, as its readers interpreted and employed it to varied, personal ends.

The earliest biography of Robert Burton appeared in 1662, as part of Thomas Fuller's Worthies of England; this was followed by Anthony a Wood in his 1692 volume of Athenae Oxonienses.

William Osler—widely regarded as the father of modern medicine—was a lifelong devotee of Robert Burton and described the Anatomy as "the greatest medical treatise written by a layman".

Robert Burton earned a new generation of enthusiasts in the 20th and 21st centuries.