# Is "The Anatomy of Melancholy" by Robert Burton a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (Printed by John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps, Oxford, 1621) is identified by: First edition: "The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is. Oxford 1621 is the true first, and the census claim is confirmed on every particular, including that 1628 is the first edition to carry the engraved title.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition: "The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is... By Democritus Iunior," Oxford, printed by John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps, 1621 (STC 4159
- Printing and the Mind of Man 120)
- Format is the cleanest test: the 1621 is the only quarto — signatures a-e8 f4 A-3C8 3D4, closing with a final errata leaf (3D4, commonly cited as Ddd4; verso blank) that is scarce and frequently lacking — while all five later lifetime editions (1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651-52), likewise Oxford and likewise for Henry Cripps, are folios
- The 1621 title page is letterpress only and the author is named solely by the pseudonym "Democritus Junior." Presence of the famous allegorical engraved title in compartments — signed by Christof (Christian) Le Blon and incorporating the author's portrait — positively excludes the first edition: that plate first appears in the third edition of 1628 and recurs in 1632, 1638, 1651-52 and 1676, with the portrait visibly ageing across the run
- Publisher imprint reads Printed by John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps, Oxford
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Burton |
| Publisher | Printed by John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps, Oxford |
| Year | 1621 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition: "The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is... By Democritus Iunior," Oxford, printed by John Lichfield and James Short for Henry… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition: "The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is... By Democritus Iunior," Oxford, printed by John Lichfield and James Short for Henry Cripps, 1621 (STC 4159; Printing and the Mind of Man 120). Format is the cleanest test: the 1621 is the only quarto — signatures a-e8 f4 A-3C8 3D4, closing with a final errata leaf (3D4, commonly cited as Ddd4; verso blank) that is scarce and frequently lacking — while all five later lifetime editions (1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651-52), likewise Oxford and likewise for Henry Cripps, are folios. The 1621 title page is letterpress only and the author is named solely by the pseudonym "Democritus Junior." Presence of the famous allegorical engraved title in compartments — signed by Christof (Christian) Le Blon and incorporating the author's portrait — positively excludes the first edition: that plate first appears in the third edition of 1628 and recurs in 1632, 1638, 1651-52 and 1676, with the portrait visibly ageing across the run.

## Is this the true first?
Oxford 1621 is the true first, and the census claim is confirmed on every particular, including that 1628 is the first edition to carry the engraved title. There is no UK/US or original-language precedence issue — Burton wrote in English and the book was printed at Oxford. The "first thus" trap is unusually strong here because Burton rewrote and enlarged the book for each of the six lifetime editions (roughly 353,000 words in 1621 rising to about 516,000 by 1651-52), so the later folios are substantively different books, are separately collected, and are catalogued as firsts of their revised texts. A 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638 or 1651-52 Oxford folio is a genuine lifetime edition, and a genuinely important one, but it is not the 1621 first.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club or club-format edition of the hand-press Anatomy exists. The circulating reprints are the tell: nineteenth-century multi-volume sets, Everyman and Nonesuch editions, the New York Review Books Classics reissue, the Clarendon/Oxford critical edition, and print-on-demand facsimiles struck from EEBO scans. Separately, loose engraved title pages from broken-up later folios are sold as decorative prints and are sometimes offered as a fragment of "the first edition" — the 1621 first never had one.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Anatomy of Melancholy* by Robert Burton a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-anatomy-of-melancholy
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.