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Jan 28, 2013 | ISBN 9780812984835 Buy
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Jan 28, 2013 | ISBN 9780812984835
This Modern Library eBook edition collects all three volumes of Edward Gibbon’s towering masterpiece of classical history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—complete and unabridged. Edward Gibbon’s magnum opus narrates the history of the Roman Empire from the second century A.D. to its collapse in the west in the fifth century and in the east in the fifteenth century. Alongside the magnificent narrative lies the author’s wit and sweeping irony, exemplified by Gibbon’s famous definition of history as “little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” An epic chronicle of uncommon literary distinction, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is widely considered the greatest work of history ever written. This unabridged eBook bundle of the celebrated text edited by Professor J. B. Bury, considered a classic since it first appeared in 1896, includes Gibbon’s own exhaustive notes, Bury’s original Introduction and index, as well as a modern appraisal of Gibbon in an Introduction from Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin.
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), born into a prosperous family, was by turns historian, member of the House of Commons, and member of Dr. Johnson’s Club. He is considered the greatest English Enlightenment historian on the basis of his masterpiece, The Decline and… More about Edward Gibbon
“Gibbon is one of those few who hold as high a place in the history of literature as in the roll of great historians.”—Professor J. B. Bury “Gibbon is a landmark and a signpost—a landmark of human achievement: and a signpost because the social convulsions of the Roman Empire as described by him sometimes prefigure and indicate convulsions which shake the whole world today.”—E. M. Forster “I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all.”—Winston Churchill “Gibbon is a kind of bridge that connects the ancient with the modern ages.”—Thomas Carlyle “Gibbon is not merely a master of the pageant and the story; he is also the critic and the historian of the mind. . . . We seem as we read him raised above the tumult and the chaos into a clear and rational air.”—Virginia Woolf
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