Edward Gibbon’s Memoirs of My Life, popularly known as his Autobiography, was the first extended autobiography by a prominent Englishman to be printed and widely disseminated within a few years of his death. After completing the sixth and final volume of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789), the monumental work that made him famous, Gibbon began to write the story of his life. However, Gibbon himself did not produce a unified text of the autobiography; instead, he left at his death in 1794 six distinct autobiographical fragments, which were consolidated into a single narrative by his friend, John Holroyd, Earl of Sheffield, and incorporated into the Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq. (1796). The Memoirs were printed separately in 1827, and again several times in the course of the...
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Citation: Machann, Clinton John. "Memoirs of My Life". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 June 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9796, accessed 09 June 2026.]
