Autobiography of Edward Gibbon - As Originally Edited by Lord Sheffield

Gibbon's "Autobiography" is one of the finest autobiographies in English a vivid portrait of the great historian, whose rational, confident temperament was typical of his age. Famous passages describe the decadent state of academic life in eighteenth-century Oxford, where he spent some unprofitable terms; his inspiration to write his "History" in 1764, when visiting Rome; and the occasion of its completion in June, 1787.