30 Facts About Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was an English essayist, historian, and politician.

Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove, in the town of Putney, Surrey.

Edward Gibbon had six siblings, five brothers and one sister, all of whom died in infancy.

Edward Gibbon's grandfather, named Edward, had lost his assets as a result of the South Sea bubble stock-market collapse in 1720 but eventually regained much of his wealth.

Edward Gibbon described himself as "a puny child, neglected by my Mother, starved by my nurse".

Edward Gibbon then took up residence in the Westminster School boarding house, owned by his adored "Aunt Kitty", Catherine Porten.

From 1747 Edward Gibbon spent time at the family home in Buriton.

Edward Gibbon was ill-suited to the college atmosphere, and later rued his 14 months there as the "most idle and unprofitable" of his life.

In that tract, Middleton denied the validity of such powers; Edward Gibbon promptly objected, or so the argument used to run.

Bowersock suggests that Edward Gibbon fabricated the Middleton story retrospectively in his anxiety about the impact of the French Revolution and Edmund Burke's claim that it was provoked by the French philosophes, so influential on Edward Gibbon.

Edward Gibbon remained in Lausanne for five intellectually productive years, a period that greatly enriched Gibbon's already immense aptitude for scholarship and erudition: he read Latin literature; travelled throughout Switzerland studying its cantons' constitutions; and studied the works of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, Pierre Bayle, and Blaise Pascal.

Edward Gibbon met the one romance in his life: the daughter of the pastor of Crassy, a young woman named Suzanne Curchod, who was later to become the wife of Louis XVI's finance minister Jacques Necker, and the mother of Madame de Stael.

Edward Gibbon's second work, Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, was a two-volume set which described the literary and social conditions of England at the time, such as Lord Lyttelton's history of Henry II and Nathaniel Lardner's The Credibility of the Gospel History.

Edward Gibbon took to London society quite easily, joined the better social clubs, including Dr Johnson's Literary Club, and looked in from time to time on his friend Holroyd in Sussex.

Edward Gibbon succeeded Oliver Goldsmith at the Royal Academy as 'professor in ancient history'.

Edward Gibbon was, perhaps least productively in that same year, 1774, returned to the House of Commons for Liskeard, Cornwall through the intervention of his relative and patron, Edward Eliot.

Edward Gibbon became the archetypal back-bencher, benignly "mute" and "indifferent," his support of the Whig ministry invariably automatic.

In 1783 Edward Gibbon had been intrigued by the cleverness of Sheffield's 12 year-old eldest daughter, Maria, and he proposed to teach her himself.

Edward Gibbon described her as a "mixture of just observation and lively imagery, the strong sense of a man expressed with the easy elegance of a female".

Edward Gibbon had returned to London in late 1787 to oversee the publication process alongside Lord Sheffield.

Edward Gibbon resided there with little commotion, took in the local society, received a visit from Sheffield in 1791, and "shared the common abhorrence" of the French Revolution.

In 1793, word came of Lady Sheffield's death; Edward Gibbon immediately left Lausanne and set sail to comfort a grieving but composed Sheffield.

Edward Gibbon is believed to have suffered from an extreme case of scrotal swelling, probably a hydrocele testis, a condition which causes the scrotum to swell with fluid in a compartment overlying either testicle.

Edward Gibbon was buried in the Sheffield Mausoleum attached to the north transept of the Church of St Mary and St Andrew, Fletching, East Sussex, having died in Fletching while staying with his great friend, Lord Sheffield.

Edward Gibbon argued that with the empire's new Christian character, large sums of wealth that would have otherwise been used in the secular affairs in promoting the state were transferred to promoting the activities of the Church.

Edward Gibbon further argued that new attitudes in Christianity caused many Christians of wealth to renounce their lifestyles and enter a monastic lifestyle, and so stop participating in the support of the empire.

Edward Gibbon's work has been criticised for its scathing view of Christianity as laid down in chapters XV and XVI, a situation which resulted in the banning of the book in several countries.

Edward Gibbon's alleged crime was disrespecting, and none too lightly, the character of sacred Christian doctrine, by "treat[ing] the Christian church as a phenomenon of general history, not a special case admitting supernatural explanations and disallowing criticism of its adherents".

Edward Gibbon's work has been praised for its style, his piquant epigrams and its effective irony.

The subject of Edward Gibbon's writing, as well as his ideas and style, have influenced other writers.