‘Be not solitary, be not idle’: secrets of 400-year-old self-help book unlocked

Lauded for centuries but a puzzle for many readers, The Anatomy of Melancholy has at last been demystified

Admired by everyone from John Milton to Nick Cave, The Anatomy of Melancholy has always been a text that has dazzled and confounded its readers in equal measure.

Now, exactly 400 years after it was published, an academic has painstakingly traced the meaning of thousands of its sphinxlike allusions, enigmatic references and arcane quotations, allowing Robert Burton’s famous text to be fully understood for the very first time.

Continue reading...