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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  Robert Burton (1577–1640)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Robert Burton (1577–1640)

Burton, Robert. An English writer of peculiar characteristics; born at Lindley, Leicestershire, Feb. 8, 1576–7; died at Oxford, Jan. 25, 1639–40. Obtaining two church livings, he resided at Christ Church, Oxford. Here he wrote the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ (published about 1621); a vast storehouse of shrewd comment, apt and learned quotation, humor, and erudition, from which Milton, Sterne, and others did not scruple to borrow. The work mirrors his own mind and temperament. (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).