Gibbon, Edward 1737-94
English historian

Born in Putney, Surrey, he was educated at Westminster and Magdalen College, Oxford. His Autobiography contains a scathing attack on the Oxford of his time and also tells of his return to Protestantism and of his forbidden love for Suzanne Curchod who afterwards became Madame Necker and the mother of Madame de Sta�l. On a visit to Rome in 1764 he decided to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols, 1776-88), the work for which he remains best known. Acclaimed as literature as well as history, and markedly pessimistic in tone, the work has as its chief concept the continuity of the Roman Empire down to the fall of Constantinople (Istanbul). Gibbon entered parliament in 1774, and as a devoted follower of Lord North was made Commissioner of Trade and Plantations. After 1788, he spent much of the remainder of his life with Lord Sheffield, who published his Miscellaneous Works (1796).

Bibliography: Sir Gavin de Beer, Gibbon and his World (1968)