Robert Burton (8 February 1577 – 25 January 1640) was an English scholar and vicar at Oxford University, best known for writing The Anatomy of Melancholy. Born at Lindley, Leicestershire, Burton spent most of his life at Oxford, first as a pupil at Brasenose College, and then as a Student (the equivalent of a fellow at other Oxford and Cambridge colleges) of Christ Church. He studied a large number of diverse subjects, many of which informed the study of melancholia for which he is chiefly famous. He was appointed vicar of St. Thomas Church in Oxford in 1616, and in 1630 he was also made the rector of Segrave, Leicester. Burton was a mathematician and dabbled in astrology. When not depressed he was an amusing companion, "very merry, facete, and juvenile," and a person of "great honesty, plain dealing, and charity." Merry, indeed, Burton had favorite sources for laughter. In 1728 Bishop Kennet wrote that: Burton's burial in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, evinces that rumors of his suicide by hanging are unfounded. He wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy largely to write himself out of being a lifelong sufferer from depression. As he described his condition in the preface "Democritus Junior to the Reader," Therefore, the treatise itself was intended as treatment. Again, from the preface: However, this sentence may also be interpreted ironically, as Burton is citing a well-known adage of the time. Indeed, the entire preface is quite satirical in nature — at one point Burton pretends to warn melancholy people to avoid his book for fear of exacerbating their symptoms: The parenthetical aside is delightfully tongue-in-cheek. The work, published under the pseudonym Democritus Junior in 1621, was quite popular. In the words of Thomas Warton: Later authors sometimes drew from the work without acknowledgment (such accusations were leveled at Laurence Sterne's book Tristram Shandy). Samuel Johnson considered it one of his favorite books. (He said of it that it "was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise".) [Boswell, Life of Johnson]. Apart from The Anatomy of Melancholy Burton's only other published work is Philosophaster, a satirical Latin comedy.