Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was an English historian, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Born near London and educated briefly at Oxford, he spent formative years in Lausanne, where he read widely in Latin and French. After returning to England in 1758 he lived chiefly at the family estate at Buriton, near Petersfield in Hampshire, where he composed his Essay on the Study of Literature (published 1761); he served in the Hampshire militia during these years. Following his father's death in 1770 he sold Buriton and settled in London (c.1772), where he sat in Parliament. During a Grand Tour of the Continent (1763-1765), on a visit to Rome in October 1764 he conceived his great work, tracing the empire from the second century through the fall of Constantinople in 1453. He returned to Lausanne to complete it, then to England, where he died. His narrative style and use of sources shaped modern historiography.