DOWNINGTOWN, PENN. Estimated just $4/6,000, Robert Burtons (English, 1577-1640) scholarly and satirical medical textbook of 1621 brought a healthy $57,960, including buyers premium, leading Pook & Pooks sale of photography, prints and ephemera on August 17. The first edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton, printed at Oxford by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1621, was subtitled What It Is, With All the Kindes, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures Of It and was bound in dark green leather with gilt bordered boards and gilt spine, gilt edges and marbled endpapers. Stemming from the collection of Dr Fin Sparre, Wilmington, Del., the tome addresses what today might be characterized as clinical depression and takes the reader on an encyclopedic tour of topics as far ranging as digestion, goblins and American geography. It became one of the most popular books of the Seventeenth Century and is still an influential work in the study of mental illness and depression. An upcoming further review of this sale will present additional highlights.

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Happy Day: 'The Anatomy Of Melancholy' Brings $57960 At Pook & Pook - Antiques And The Arts Weekly - Antiques and the Arts Online