Robert Burton (8 Feb 1577 - 25 Jan 1640) was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. Burton was educated at Oxford, elected a student (life fellow) of Christ Church (one of the colleges of the university) in 1599, and lived there the rest of his life, becoming a bachelor of divinity in 1614 and vicar of St. Thomas's Church, Oxford, in 1616. The Anatomy of Melancholy is presented as a medical textbook on the subject of melancholia. Much of t