SOURCE: Gordon, George, Lord Byron. The Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, edited by Thomas Moore, p. 48. 1920. Reprint. Detroit: Scholarly Press, 1972.

In the excerpt below from a list of his lifetime of reading, Byron recommends Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy as a seminal English-language work.

I have also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand novels, including the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, and Rousseau, & c. & c. The book, in my opinion, most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well read, with the least trouble, is Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, the most amusing and instructive medley of quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If, however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more improved for literary conversation than...