Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Portrait, oil on canvas, of Edward Emily Gibbon
(1737–1794) by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)
Born
April 27, 1737
Putney, Surrey, England
Died
January 16, 1794 (aged 56)
London
Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737[1] – January
16, 1794) was an English historian and Mem-
ber of Parliament. His most important work,
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Ro-
man Empire, was published in six volumes
between 1776 and 1788. The History
is
known principally for the quality and irony of
its prose, its use of primary sources, and its
open denigration of organized religion,
though the extent of this is disputed by some
critics.[2]
Childhood
Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of
Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove, in
the town of Putney, Surrey. He had six sib-
lings: five brothers and one sister, all of
whom died in infancy. His grandfather, also
named Edward, had lost all of his assets in
the South Sea Bubble stock market collapse
(1720), but eventually regained much of his
wealth, so that Gibbon’s father was able to
inherit a substantial estate.
As a youth, his health was under constant
threat. He described himself as "a puny child,
neglected by my Mother, starved by my
nurse." At age nine, Gibbon was sent to Dr.
Woddeson’s school at Kingston-on-Thames,
shortly after which his mother died. He then
took up residence in the Westminster School
boarding house, owned by his adored "Aunt
Kitty," Catherine Porten. Soon after she died
in 1786, he remembered her as rescuing him
from his mother’s disdain, and imparting "the
first rudiments of knowledge, the first exer-
cise of reason, and a taste for books which is
still the pleasure and glory of my life."[3] By
1751, Gibbon’s reading was already vora-
cious and certainly pointed toward his future
pursuits: Laurence Echard’s Roman History
(1713), William Howel(l)’s An Institution of
General History (1680–85), and several of the
65 volumes of the acclaimed Universal His-
tory from the Earliest Account of Time
(1747–1768).[4]
Oxford, Lausanne, and a