Reading matters

The art of melancholy: Times Literary Supplement


The TLS first paragraph mentions, inevitably, The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton.

Written and published in the mid-17th century, The Anatomy is, despite its subject, a delightfully funny book . . . a "promiscuous leviathan" of a book that treats of everything under the sun.


If you have ever read and enjoyed Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman and Gustave Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet, then The Anatomy is a book for you. Paperback edition published by New York Review of Books includes an introduction by William Gass. To order online, locally, Mister Bijou can recommend paddyfield