Endpapers

Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is a meandering text that invites a meandering reading. The author, or more properly narrator, describes himself as "an unconstant, unsettled mind," "not able to attain to a superficial skill" in any domain, yet possessing "a great desire ... to have some smattering in all." This is my third attempt at reading Anatomy all the way through. I find myself constantly called by other texts, either mentioned in passing by Democritus Junior, or texts by contemporaries (Shakespeare, Browne) for no other reason than their temporal proximity.

I don't know what form this reading blog is going to take, but I am fairly certain it is not going to be chronological. I think of it as an expanded margin of the book and will be free to go back and add onto it, right on the page where I may have missed something.

Frontispiece to the Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford, 1628. British Library. C.123.k.281.