"THE GREATEST HISTORICAL WORK EVER WRITTEN": GIBBON'S LANDMARK DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 1804 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

GIBBON, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Philadelphia: William Y. Birch & Abraham Small, 1804-05. Eight volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown tree calf gilt, burgundy morocco spine labels. $9800.

First American edition set, of one of the greatest classics of Western thought, with three folding engraved maps, in a beautiful contemporary binding.

"This masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style has remained one of the ageless historical works… Gibbon brought a width of vision and a critical mastery of the available sources which have not been equaled to this day; and the result was clothed in an inimitable prose" (PMM 222). "For 22 years Gibbon was a prodigy of steady and arduous application. His investigations extended over almost the whole range of intellectual activity for nearly 1500 years… it is not merely the learning of his work, learned as it is, that gives it character as a history. It is also that ingenious skill by which the vast erudition, the boundless range, the infinite variety, and the gorgeous magnificence of the details are all wrought together in a symmetrical whole… It is still entitled to be esteemed as the greatest historical work ever written" (Adams, Manual of Historical Literature, 146-7). The first edition of Gibbon's History was published in England in six volumes from 1776 to 1788. It was of great interest to American readers, who were taught Roman history from an early age, “a common reference point for the educated classes… At pivotal moments in history, the shadow of ancient Rome has dramatically shaped perceptions of the present. The Founding Fathers of the United States were no exception. They found the history of Rome utterly compelling and for many of the same reasons as people today, but amid the fervour of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers drew upon Roman history for the unique task of creating a republic…This went further than a superficial interest in ancient Rome. Classical republicanism was at the heart of the Founding. American colonists had relied on translations of the original Roman texts by radical Whigs such as Thomas Gordon, Basil Kennet, Walter Moyle, and Edward Wortley Montagu. Learning from antiquity would help America to avoid the same mistakes that had befallen ancient Rome and now Britain” (David Cowan). “Copies of Plutarch and Livy were brought to the Continental Congress…while the Federalist Papers were written under pen-names like Caesar, Brutus, and Publius, and John Adams attributed his world view to Cicero…When George Washington deigned not to hold a third term, he was compared to the noble dictator Cincinnatus who dropped his sword for a plow” (Ed Simon). It was natural that the Founding Fathers discovered Gibbon. John Adams began reading the available volumes of Gibbon by the winter of 1787, finishing the first volume by the end of the year and beginning the second in January 1788 (it was slow going for him, writing “if a book does not interest me exceedingly it is a task too me to go through it; and I fear for this reason I shall never get through Gibbon. Indolence, indolence, I fear will be my ruin”). During the same period Jefferson was recommending the book on his various reading lists, and James Madison referred to it in his 1787 notes in his Ancient and Modern Confederacies. So it is little wonder that by 1804, demand had grown enough in America that a publisher in Philadelphia printed it in this country for the first time, claiming that it would be “the most complete Edition of Gibbon extant,” as it would include Memoirs of My Life and Writing at the end of the last volume. Norton, 102.

Scattered foxing to text, a bit of dampstaining to first few leaves of Volume I and last few leaves of Volume VIII; expertly repaired closed tear to last leaf of Volume III, affecting text but not readability; expert paper repairs to G1 and G2 in Volume V, affecting side notes but not readability. Folding maps with offsetting and light embrowning, as is typical of the era. Beautifully bound.