Memoirs of My Life

When the historian Edward Gibbon died in 1794, he left behind an incomplete autobiography of his extraordinary life. Edited by his friend Lord Sheffield, the Memoirs are an astonishing portrait of a rich, full life. Recounting Gibbon's childhood in London, his disappointment with an Oxford steeped in port and prejudice, his successful years in Lausanne, his first—and only—love affair and the monolithic achievement of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, they distill his genius for history into a remarkable gift for autobiography. Candid and detailed, these writings are filled with warmth and intellectual passion.