Engraving by William Holl the Younger after Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1853. Courtesy The Walter Scott Digital Archive, Edinburgh University Library.
Edward Gibbon is known primarily as the author of one great book, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788), a book that is for a variety of reasons—historical, historiographic, stylistic and cultural—so very great that we may be tempted to speak of Gibbon in absolute terms as England’s first great historian.
English history-writing did not commence with Gibbon’s Decline, but with the possible exception of Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars (published posthumously in 1702-1704), there was no eminent native historian before him. The English writing that Gibbon himself set out from included middle-brow Anglican histories that he read as a...
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Citation: Mankin, Robert. "Edward Gibbon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 March 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1726, accessed 14 December 2025.]
