Gibbon, Edward. English historian. Born in Putney in 1737. Educated at Westminster and Magdalen College, Oxford. While at the university, Gibbon was received into the Catholic Church, but having been sent to a Calvinist at Lausanne became a Protestant again the next year. At Lausanne he met Voltaire, and fell in love with Mademoiselle Curchod, afterwards Madame Necker. He returned to London in 1758 and, after a short term of service in the Hampshire militia, revisited the Continent, staying especially at Paris and Rome. When again in England, he wrote "Memoires Litteraires de la Grand Bretagne," and set to work on his great book, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," the first volume of which appeared in 1776 and the last in 1788. He entered parliament in 1774, as a supporter of Lord North. Wrote the "Memoire Justificatif," and obtained a place at the board of trade. From 1783 to 1793 Gibbon lived at Lausanne, Switzerland, and died in 1794, soon after his return.

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