Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon

First Edition, Volume I, 1796

Let us do justice to that intrepid spirit, whose leaps have sometimes led to truth and whose very excesses, like popular rebellions, have struck salutary fears in the heart of the despot. Let our thoughts be filled with all that we owe to the geometric spirit; but let us search for the spirit of philosophy, which is at once wiser than the one and more universal than the other.

— Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature, in Miscellaneous Works, 2nd ed., vol. 4, p. 58.[1]

The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) is known primarily as the author of the magisterial The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols., 1776–1789). Both the imposing length of and awesome erudition displayed in that work have understandably overshadowed his other literary achievements, many of which deserve to be noted in their own valuable capacities.

Description

Shortly following Gibbon's death, his good friend and literary executor, John Lord Sheffield undertook to edit and in 1796 published the first (of three) edition(s) of the Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon (MW)[2] in order that the reading public have an opportunity to gain a broader insight into the historian and his overall body of work. Various elements of the MW, as well as other Gibbon writings not contained therein, are listed below along with their pertinent bibliographical detail and descriptive text where available. Notes and letters from Sheffield were also included in the MW, but only Gibbon's writings follow here. Listed contents are exactly those from each volume's table as they appear in the Google Books digitized copies. Links to those copies are provided below. Where publisher and year follows a work the reference is to the year of its first publication apart from the MW. A year following alone (with or without a scholar's name) refers to the year of Gibbon's composition.[3] An asterisk [*] denotes that the work can be found in Craddock, EEEG. (see References, -ed.)

The Miscellaneous Works

The first edition was "pirated" and reprinted twice in 1796, in Ireland and Switzerland:[13]

Other writings

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ translated in Pocock, EEG, p. 228.
  2. ↑ the full title of 1796 (and in square brackets, that of 1814) is, [The] Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esquire; [Esq.] with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, composed by himself.[:] Illustrated from his Letters, with occasional notes and narrative, by [the Right Honourable] John, Lord Sheffield. in Two Volumes [a New Edition, with Considerable Additions in Five Volumes].
  3. ↑ sources for this data are Sheffield's tables of contents; Norton, Biblio; Craddock, EEEG; and Ghosh, "Gibbon's Dark Ages."
  4. ↑ precise days of publication in all cases from Norton, Biblio.
  5. ↑ Norton, Biblio, p. 197.
  6. ↑ Womersley, Watchmen, at 235-236, 240, and 346-349.
  7. ↑ Bonnard, Memoirs, "Preface," vii-xxxiii, at xxxi. The manuscript originals are all contained, with one small exception, in the British Museum, Gibbon Papers, Add. MSS 34874 (p. xiii). As to why Gibbon exercised six attempts to recount his life on paper, Bonnard opines that he was repeatedly dissatisfied with subject order and length. But from draft to draft, where Gibbon met with self-approval, he "very often contented himself with simply copying what he had already written." (p. xxiv.)
  8. ↑ Murray, Autobiographies.
  9. ↑ Gibbon, Memoirs, ¶"The design of my first work;"  ¶"Two years elapsed in silence."
  10. ↑ Womersley, ODNB, p. 11; Norton, Biblio, p. 3. additional background in: Peter Ghosh, "Gibbon's First Thoughts: Rome, Christianity and the Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature 1758–61," Journal of Roman Studies 85(1995), 148–164; Pocock, EEG, chapter 9, "The 'Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature': imagination, irony and history," 208-239; Brian Norman, chapter 4 in "The Influence of Switzerland on the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century [SVEC] v.2002:03, (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002), 44-61.
  11. ↑ Harrison seems certain to have also printed the first edition for "official purposes and not for general circulation." Norton, Biblio, 28-29.
  12. ↑ Craddock, EEEG, 534-545, at pp. 545, 538-40, 542, 544-45, 600. see also Norton, Biblio, 179-81. At this juncture, Pinkerton's reputation had been decidedly mixed: part serious antiquarian enjoying the patronage of Horace Walpole, part near buffoon whose work could evoke "hilarity" and "ridicule." Gibbon eventually chose to prefer the former, believing that "the volatile and fiery particles of his nature have been discharged [leaving] a pure and solid substance endowed with many active and useful energies." Craddock, EEEG, p. 542; Trevor-Roper, "Gibbon's Last Project," pp. 407, 414.
  13. ↑ Norton, Biblio, p. 197; 203-204.
  14. ↑ actually published in 1815, no later than Feb. 15.  Ibid., p. 195.
  15. ↑ Pocock, EEG, pp. 89-91, 93. Additional background from Brian Norman, chapter 2 in "The Influence of Switzerland on the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century [SVEC] v.2002:03, (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002), 21-32. Norman claims "certainty" of his dating of the work based on a close analysis of Gibbon's scriptional accentuation (pp. 30–31).
  16. ↑ Ghosh, "Gibbon's Dark Ages," p. 8.

References

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