Mary Ann Lund is Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Leicester.

'There is much illuminating discussion here. Building on previous scholarship which has situated Burton's account of despair in the context of Jacobean and Caroline religious politics, Lund makes a good case for the influence of the Danish Lutheran Niels Hemmingsen, and draws interesting comparisons with less well-known contemporary English figures such as Robert Bolton and Robert Yarrow … [the book] develops and persuasively reorientates a significant strand of Burton criticism, and presents a nuanced vision of the relationship between early modern writers and their imagined readers.' English Historical Review

• Introduction: Zisca's drum: reading and cure; 1. Imagining readings; 2. The cure of despair: reading the end of The Anatomy of Melancholy; 3. Printed therapeutics: The Anatomy of Melancholy and early modern medical writing; 4. The whole physician; 5. Speaking out of experience; 6. The structure of melancholy: from cause to cure; Conclusion.

Mary Ann Lund is Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Leicester.

'There is much illuminating discussion here. Building on previous scholarship which has situated Burton's account of despair in the context of Jacobean and Caroline religious politics, Lund makes a good case for the influence of the Danish Lutheran Niels Hemmingsen, and draws interesting comparisons with less well-known contemporary English figures such as Robert Bolton and Robert Yarrow … [the book] develops and persuasively reorientates a significant strand of Burton criticism, and presents a nuanced vision of the relationship between early modern writers and their imagined readers.' English Historical Review

• Introduction: Zisca's drum: reading and cure; 1. Imagining readings; 2. The cure of despair: reading the end of The Anatomy of Melancholy; 3. Printed therapeutics: The Anatomy of Melancholy and early modern medical writing; 4. The whole physician; 5. Speaking out of experience; 6. The structure of melancholy: from cause to cure; Conclusion.

Mary Ann Lund is Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Leicester.

'There is much illuminating discussion here. Building on previous scholarship which has situated Burton's account of despair in the context of Jacobean and Caroline religious politics, Lund makes a good case for the influence of the Danish Lutheran Niels Hemmingsen, and draws interesting comparisons with less well-known contemporary English figures such as Robert Bolton and Robert Yarrow … [the book] develops and persuasively reorientates a significant strand of Burton criticism, and presents a nuanced vision of the relationship between early modern writers and their imagined readers.' English Historical Review

• Introduction: Zisca's drum: reading and cure; 1. Imagining readings; 2. The cure of despair: reading the end of The Anatomy of Melancholy; 3. Printed therapeutics: The Anatomy of Melancholy and early modern medical writing; 4. The whole physician; 5. Speaking out of experience; 6. The structure of melancholy: from cause to cure; Conclusion.