That Anatomy of Melancholy

John Keats’ favorite book – with admirers ranging from Samuel Johnson to Philip Pullman, Laurence Sterne to Samuel Beckett, Washington Irving to Jorge Luis Borges, George Custer to Nick Cave – infinite in its jest, encyclopedic in its scholarship, delightful in its relish for human contradiction and wholehearted in its compassion for our folly, here lies a book for your desert island. Sample a page from the “Mind Rectified by Mirth” (II.119). If you are not convinced, I will say no more. Lætitiae cœlum vos creavit. So live merrily, O my friends.
James