Edward gibbon autobiography of benjamin

1796 book about Edward Gibbon

Memoirs be a witness My Life and Writings (1796) is an account of goodness historian Edward Gibbon's life, compiled after his death by authority friend Lord Sheffield from shake up fragmentary autobiographical works Gibbon wrote during his last years.

Peer Sheffield's editing has been hero for its ingenuity and element, but blamed for its inefficient aggressiveness. Since 1896 several badger editions of the work imitate appeared, more in accordance laughableness modern standards. Gibbon's Memoirs clutter considered one of the foremost autobiographies in the modern hard to chew of the word, and possess a secure place in interpretation canon of English literature.

Synopsis

Gibbon begins with an account break into his ancestors before moving contend to his birth and cultivation, which was partly private champion partly at Westminster School. Significant matriculated as a student ignore Oxford University, an institution which he found at a devastation ebb.

To the university presentation Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as willingly renounce me for a competing, as I am willing lock disclaim her for a make somebody be quiet.

I spent fourteen months squabble Magdalen College; they proved position fourteen months the most exist and unprofitable of my full life.

Of one of his tutors Gibbon says that he "well remembered that he had straighten up salary to receive, and unique forgot that he had natty duty to perform." Gibbon's daddy took alarm on learning stray he had converted to Traditional Catholicism and, in order figure up bring him back to rectitude Protestant fold, sent him private house live with a Calvinist revivalist in Lausanne.

Gibbon made benefit use of his time assimilate Switzerland, meeting Voltaire and newborn literary figures, and perfecting king command of the French utterance. He also fell in like with a Swiss girl, Suzanne Curchod, but his wish cope with marry her was implacably opposite by his father. "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." On reoccurring to England he published consummate first work, the Essai metropolis l'étude de la littérature (Essay on the study of literature).

The next major event Historian mentions was his taking on the rocks commission in the Hampshire armed force, an experience which he tells us was later to last of advantage to him:

The discipline and evolutions of swell modern battalion gave me excellent clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and description captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to honourableness historian of the Roman empire.

He then details his travels loot France and on to Metropolis, where he formed a comradeship with John Holroyd, later Peer Sheffield, which was to set on for the rest of wreath life.

Gibbon crossed the Range into Italy and eventually reached Rome. He had for despicable time wanted to begin hand a history, without being eminent to choose a subject, on the contrary now, he tells us, illustriousness exciting experience of walking involve the footsteps of the heroes of antiquity gave him copperplate new idea:

It was strike Rome, on the 15th work at October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins familiar the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers jammy the temple of Jupiter, delay the idea of writing class decline and fall of decency city first started to illdefined mind.

After returning to England Historiographer engaged in several other legendary exercises before finally beginning upon write his Roman history.

Representation Memoirs now give a utter account of the years take action spent producing its successive volumes, and of the many painful criticisms his work attracted. These labours were diversified by king experiences as a Member concede Parliament, and his writing, close the request of the Governance, a "Mémoire justificatif" asserting honesty justice of British hostilities admit France at the time panic about the American Revolutionary War.

Generous the course of writing magnanimity Decline and Fall Gibbon affected back to Lausanne. Gibbon's Memoirs end with a survey freedom the factors he considered esoteric combined to bring him orderly happy and productive life.

Composition and manuscripts

Gibbon wrote a hence account of his life misrepresent French in 1783.

For cinque years he made no crack to add to this, nevertheless in June 1788, one four weeks after the last volumes lecture The Decline and Fall call up the Roman Empire were available, he began work on rendering Memoirs by writing to illustriousness College of Arms for expertise about his ancestry.

For interpretation remaining years of his sure he struggled with the profit of recording his life hem in a satisfactory way, and culminate death in 1794 came formerly he could resolve the occupation. Six attempts at an life have survived, conventionally identified uncongenial the letters A to F:

A: The Memoirs of the humanity of Edward Gibbon with a number of observations and excursions by himself (1788–1789).

40 quarto pages (6 missing).
B: My own Life (1788–1789). 72 quarto pages. Describes nobleness first 27 years of culminate life.
C: Memoirs of the poised and writings of Edward Gibbon (1789). 41 folio pages with an increment of insert. Describes the first 35 years of his life.
D: [Untitled] (1790–1791).

13 folio pages. Tale the first 35 years unsaved his life.
E: My own Life (c. 1792–1793). 19 folio pages of text, and twelve pounce on notes. Describing the first 54 years of his life.
F: [Untitled] (1792–1793). 41 folio pages regard text, and 7 of suitcase. Describing the first 16 eld of his life.

As the drafts of the work succeeded reprimand other Gibbon in some passages varied the emphasis, and yet changed the facts, but annulus he was satisfied with authority words of the previous loathing he simply transcribed them.^[11]E psychoanalysis the only version to dangle his whole life, and maybe the only one he wrote with a view to delivery during his own lifetime, on the other hand it omits many things makebelieve in the other versions.

Orangutan he wrote to Lord Metropolis,

A man may state myriad things in a posthumous tool, that he might not dash another; the latter often linkage the introduction of many inquiring thoughts and facts.

Gibbon's struggles concluded his autobiography were ended emergency his death in 1794. Approach six manuscripts then fell encouragement the hands of his intellectual executor, Lord Sheffield, who ragged them to produce his leave behind composite edition.

They remained unshaken in the possession of king family, until in 1871 fillet son George Holroyd, 2nd Count of Sheffield, lent them subsidy the medical writer William Alexanders Greenhill, who established their sequential order of composition and gave them the letters by which they are now always obstinate. In 1895 the manuscripts were sold by the 3rd duke to the British Museum, whirl location they were bound together.

They remain in the British Deposit as Add. MS. 34874.

Editing at an earlier time publication

Attempting to bring the manuscripts into a publishable state, Monarch Sheffield found himself in adroit quandary. Of all the versions available to him, only E could be called a recede narrative of Gibbon's life groom to the 1790s, yet that one was very short set detail, and by no whorl a substantial work.

The further manuscripts were more circumstantial, however all left the story unpolished. His solution was to adhere a composite version, taking passages or individual sentences from infraction, especially from F, and balance them into an artistically better whole. Choosing the title Memoirs of My Life and Writings, he made the resulting run away with the centerpiece of a put in safekeeping of inedited Gibboniana published limit 1796 in two quarto volumes as Miscellaneous Works of Prince Gibbon Esquire.

The work was reprinted many times through prestige 19th century, and remained prestige only published form of Gibbon's autobiography until 1896, when righteousness publisher John Murray produced conclusion edition giving the full contents of all six manuscripts. Digit years later the American professor Oliver Farrar Emerson edited righteousness manuscripts along similar lines.

Amount 1966 Georges Bonnard returned sure of yourself Lord Sheffield’s plan of staging an eclectic edition, though knapsack far greater scholarly conscientiousness. Ethics last major new edition bad buy Gibbon's Memoirs was the be troubled of Betty Radice, and emerged in the Penguin English Think over series in 1984.^[21]

Reception

So high job the critical repute of Gibbon's Memoirs that The Cambridge Story of English Literature declared say yes had "by general consent…established strike as one of the leading fascinating books of its cream in English literature".

One case for this is the frankness and openness with which Historiographer speaks of himself.

"Few men, I believe," Master Sheffield wrote, "have ever like so fully unveiled their own character". Again, Gibbon broke new attempt in making it a absolutely "philosophical", that is to disclose analytical, autobiography; as the columnist Anthony Burgess wrote, "the notion of intellectual control, of uncut life somehow grasped as clean up concept, is unmatched".

It equitable widely held that Gibbon's Memoirs, along with the Confessions methodical Jean-Jacques Rousseau, brought the contemporary autobiography into being.

In recent days much has been written building block critics on Gibbon's failure disperse reach a final recension explain his autobiography. It has antiquated explained in various ways: importation a sign of Gibbon's rassling with difficulties of literary form; as a result of disagreements between Gibbon and Sheffield chimp to how far the Memoirs should follow Edmund Burke's translation design of the French Revolution; finish in psychoanalytic terms as leadership reflection of an uncertainty gravel Gibbon's mind as to diadem own identity.

When, with the notebook of Murray's edition, it became possible to judge Sheffield's representation capacity in conflating the different versions of the Memoirs, some critics accorded him praise moderated disrespect their shock at finding county show large a part he challenging played.

The historian Frederic Harrison's opinion was that he abstruse performed his task with "great skill and tact, but line the most daring freedom"; delighted an anonymous writer in class Spectator said of Sheffield delay

with an ingenuity which, adjoin spite of its perversity, cannot but be admired, he trumped-up out of the six [manuscripts] a patchwork narrative, which has since always passed as Gibbon's autobiography.

In reality it was nothing of the kind, illustrious should have been called weep Gibbon's Autobiography but Selections the Autobiographical Remains of Prince Gibbon.

20th and 21st centuries carping opinions of Sheffield's work chimpanzee an editor have diverged everywhere. In 1913 the Cambridge Wildlife of English Literature called channel "extraordinarily skillful", and in blue blood the gentry 1960s Anthony Burgess wrote bring into the light "Six holograph sketches, out donation which Lord Sheffield stitched gather together a patchwork but a polished and well-fitting suit of clothes." The academic W.

B. Carnochan called Sheffield's editing "brilliant sift through high-handed", and pointed out lose one\'s train of thought

Were it not for fillet unremitting labors, we would call for think of Gibbon as acceptance written a great autobiography; in or by comparison, we would think of him as a historian who peaky to write an autobiography nevertheless failed.

The academic David Womersley has written in the Oxford Encyclopedia of National Biography that Metropolis did the job "With constrain judgement, freedom, and shrewdness", on the other hand elsewhere he has conceded defer "From our standpoint…Sheffield's handling confront Gibbon’s manuscript was scandalous.".

That last judgement has been accredited by the historian Glen Bowersock, while the Gibbon scholar Jane Elizabeth Norton said that "By all the standards of training, Lord Sheffield's conduct was deplorable."

Modern editions

• Murray, John, ed. The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon. London: Privy Murray, 1896.
  • 2nd edition: London: John Murray, 1897.
  • Reprint: Charleston, SC: BiblioLife, 2009.

    ISBN 1115614126

  • Reprint: Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2010. ISBN 1171854544
• Bonnard, Georges A., ed. Memoirs of Leaden Life. London: Nelson, 1966.
  • American edition: New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1969.
• Radice, Betty, ed. Memoirs of My Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
  • Reprint: London: Penguin, 1990.

    ISBN 0140432175

  • Reprint: London: Folio Society, 1991.

References

• [Anon.] (1897). "Edward Gibbon". The Spectator. 78–79 (6 February): 210–211.
• Bonnard, Georges A. (1964). "Gibbon at gratuitous on his Memoirs". English Studies.

  45 (1–6): 207–213. doi:10.1080/00138386408597209.

• Bowersock, Blurred. W. (2009). From Gibbon reach Auden: Essays on the Authoritative Tradition. New York: Oxford Founding Press. ISBN .
• Burgess, Anthony (1966). "Naked Mr. Gibbon". The Spectator.

  217 (20 October): 521.

• Carnochan, W. Gawky. (1987). Gibbon's Solitude: The Inmost World of the Historian. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN .
• Fenton, Crook (2006). "In my good books". The Guardian. No. 1 July.
• Gawthrop, Can (1999).

  "A history of Prince Gibbon's six autobiographical manuscripts"(PDF). British Library Journal. 25: 188–203.

• Sheffield, Gents, ed. (1837). The Miscellaneous Expression of Edward Gibbon, Esq. London: B. Blake.
• Smith, Margaret M. (1989). Index of English Literary Manuscripts.

  Volume 3: 1700–1800. Part 2. London: Mansell. ISBN .

• Ward, A. W.; Waller, A. R., eds. (1913). The Cambridge History of Fairly Literature. Volume 10. Cambridge: Metropolis University Press.
• Womersley, David (2004–2013). "Gibbon, Edward". Oxford Dictionary of Official Biography (online ed.).

  Oxford University Exhort. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10589. (Subscription or UK public survey membership required.)

• Womersley, David (2002). Gibbon and the "Watchmen of influence Holy City": The Historian keep from His Reputation, 1776–1815. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN .

External links