Editing Robert Burton (section)

===Library===
[[File:Robert Burton's library, Christ Church Library, Oxford, Cushing's Life of William Osler.png|thumb|left|Robert Burton's library in Christ Church Library, 1907, after Osler's efforts to reorganise the bequest.{{sfn|Dewey|1969|p=2247}}]]
According to Bamborough, "to describe Burton as 'bookish' can only be called ridiculous understatement".{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}} Burton owned 1738 books in total,{{sfn|Kiessling|1988|pp=v–xxxviii}} tenfold the library of a typical Oxford don, though not as vast as those of some other contemporary humanist scholars.{{sfn|Bamborough|2009}}{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|pp=15–16}}{{efn|The scholar and occultist [[John Dee]] (1527–1608), for instance, held a library totalling over 3000 books and 1000 manuscripts.<ref>{{cite web |title=The lost library of John Dee |url=https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/lost-library-john-dee |publisher=Royal College of Physicians |date=14 December 2015}}</ref>}} He accumulated the collection over a forty-six year period, from 1594 to 1640.{{sfn|Kiessling|1988|pp=v–xxxviii}} The profits from the ''Anatomy'' probably funded most of the library, larger than his modest academic and ecclesiastical income would have been able to cover.{{sfn|Nochimson|1974|p=100}} The majority of the library's contents was in Latin, but the number of English volumes was untypically large. Burton seems to have been uncomfortable reading outside these two primary languages; he owned only a handful of titles in Italian, German, Spanish, and [[Hebrew]], and none in [[Ancient Greek|Greek]], the last despite his humanist reputation and the recurring Grecian references in the ''Anatomy''.{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=16}} Again despite this reputation, the majority of Burton's library was contemporary. He owned hundreds of cheap pamphlets, satires, and popular plays: all works which had been excluded from the recently founded Bodleian Library, perhaps why Burton felt the need to purchase them.{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=17}} Though religious works composed the largest category in his library (about one quarter), the remaining three quarters were made up by an eclectic collection of literary, historical, medical, and geographical volumes, testifying to Burton's broad scholarship.{{sfn|O'Connell|1986|p=17}} Burton was an avid annotator of books, with marginal notes in around one-fifth of his books, from the tangential to the bluntly hostile.{{sfn|Gowland|2006|p=8}}

Burton's library was divided between the Bodleian and Christ Church libraries after his death. In the early 20th century, Oxford [[Regius Professor of Medicine (Oxford)|Regius Professor of Medicine]] [[William Osler]], an enthusiast for Burton, found Burton's bequests "scattered indiscriminately"<ref>Osler quoted in {{harvnb|Dewey|1969|p=2248}}</ref> throughout the two libraries, and, from 1907 to 1908, set about having them gathered together in one collection, rediscovering over a thousand of Burton's volumes. In Christ Church Library, Osler set up an elaborate display of these books surrounding a copy of the Brasenose Portrait of Burton. Osler delivered an address on the contents of Burton's library the following year.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=40}}{{sfn|Dewey|1969|p=2248}}{{sfn|Wing|2012|pp=19–20}} In 1964, Christ Church Library disassembled Osler's Burton collection, moving the books to the Archiva Superiora on the second floor.{{sfn|Wing|2012|pp=19–20}} This collection comprises 1530 of the 1738 books and two manuscripts owned by Burton. The remaining 210 were distributed to either various acquaintances of Burton; gifted or traded to other libraries or bookshops; or by selling duplicates, some of which are unrecorded. Of the 140 books yet to be located, it is thought that around half of these are extant.{{sfn|Kiessling|1988|pp=v–xxxviii}} Christ Church Library has referred to Burton's library as "one of the most important surviving English private libraries from the period before the Civil War".{{sfn|Christ Church, "History of the Library"}}