Outline of The History of The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire - A Gibbon Chronology

A Gibbon Chronology

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• 1737 April 27 (N.S. May 8): born in Putney, county of Surrey, near London.

• 1744 Apr: tutored privately by clergyman/grammarian, John Kirkby.

• 1746 Jan: attends Dr. Wooddeson's grammar school at Kingston upon Thames.

• 1747 Dec 26: mother dies.

• 1748 Jan: enters Westminster School and boarding house run by Catherine "Aunt Kitty" Porten.

• 1750 overtaken by a "strange nervous affection," forced temporarily to drop formal education.

• 1751 health improves, reads large histories voraciously, i.e., Echard, Howel, and the Universal History.

• 1752 Jan: at father's direction, tutored by the "feckless and neglectful" Rev. Philip Francis.
  • Apr 3: again at father's orders, enters Magdalen College, Oxford as a gentleman commoner, to spend 14 of the "most idle and unprofitable of my whole life."

• 1753 exposure to works by Conyers Middleton and Robert Parsons produces attraction to Catholicism.
  • June 8: converts to Roman Catholicism.
  • June 19: father "exiles" him to Lausanne, Switzerland (arrives June 30).
  • tutored by Reformed Calvinist pastor Daniel Pavillard, "the first father of my mind."
  • meets first (of 2) great friend(s), Georges Deyverdun.

• 1754 Dec 25: re-converted to Protestantism.

• 1755 begins "a programme of serious and methodical reading," including much Latin and mathematics.
  • May 8: father marries Dorothea Patton, loved "as a companion, a friend, and a mother."
  • Autumn: tours Switzerland.

• 1757 meets serious love interest Suzanne Curchod (later Madame Necker); is taken with her "wit, ... beauty, and erudition." becomes engaged to be married.
  • meets Voltaire, whose "influence is palpable in the first volume" of the D&F.

• 1758 Aug: returns to England, splits residence between Buriton family estate (where the library was his "peculiar domain") and New Bond Street, London.
  • breaks with Curchod at father's impenetrable resistance.

• 1759 June 12 - 1762 Dec 23: South Hampshire militia active duty, eventually promoted from captain to lieutenant colonel.

• 1761 July 7: publishes first major work, Essai sur l'Étude de littérature, paying "prolonged homage to Montesquieu."

• 1761 purchases the 20-volume Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, "eventually of major importance" for the D&F.

• 1763 Jan 28 - 1765 June: on the Grand Tour, arrival in Paris.

• 1763 May: leaves for Lausanne.

• 1764 final break with Suzanne Curchod at Ferney; meets second great friend, John Baker Holroyd, later Lord Sheffield.

• 1764 April 18: leaves for Italy with chum William Guise. visits Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice.

• 1765 June: returns to England.
  • joined by Deyverdun who stays four years at Buriton.

• 1768 Apr 15 - 1769 with Deyverdun, publishes two volumes of their literary review Mémoires littéraires de la Grande-Bretagne.

• 1770 Feb 3: publishes Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the 'Aeneid'. shows use of polemical irony and polished organization of historical evidence.

• 1770 Nov 12: father dies, inheritance finally brings financial independence.
  • resigns commission in South Hampshire militia.

• 1772 Buriton estate leased, moves to 7 Bentinck St., Cavendish Square.

• 1773 Feb: begins writing the D&F.

• 1774 Oct 11: elected M.P. for Liskeard, Cornwall.
  • joins Samuel Johnson's literary Club.
  • negotiates publishing contract with firm of Strahan & Cadell.

• 1776 Feb 17: D&F vol. 1 published, scathing attacks ensue.

• 1777 May: leaves on six-month trip to Paris.

• 1779 Jan 14: answers attackers with publication of A Vindication of some passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters.
  • July: appointed to the government's Board of Trade and Plantations (BT&P).
  • Oct 12: publishes the Mémoire Justificatif pour servir de Réponse à l'Exposé, etc. in the London Morning Post.

• 1780 Sep 1: loses Liskeard seat in Parliament when patron and relative Edward Eliot defects to the opposition.

• 1781 March 1: D&F vols. 2-3 published;
  • June 25: elected M.P. for Lymington.

• 1782 May: BT&P abolished, loses position.

• 1783 Sep 1: sends his library ahead, leaves for Lausanne to reside permanently with Deyverdun at the latter's estate, La Grotte.

• 1786 Summer: death of Catherine Porten.

• 1787 June 27: finishes writing D&F.
  • Aug: returns to England.

• 1788 May 8: D&F vols. 4-6 published;
  • July: leaves for Lausanne.
  • starts composing his Memoirs.

• 1789 July 4: "profoundly shaken" at the death of Deyverdun; inherits La Grotte.
  • cautiously assesses the French Revolution.
  • Dec. 1: Strahan & Cadell publish D&F sixth edition of volume 1 with a third edition of volumes 2 and 3, as a new set.

• 1790 reads Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, immediately endorses its view.

• 1791 receives visit from Sheffield and family, who report the chaos in Paris.

• 1793 completes six drafts (A-F) of his Memoirs.
  • Apr 26: returns to England following death of Lady Sheffield.
  • May: stays with Sheffield until October.
  • Nov: returns to 7 Bentinck St., London.
  • Dec: falls dangerously ill from hernia/liver cirrhosis.

• 1794 Jan 13: last of three operations to drain fluid, with, it turns out, a dirty knife.
  • Jan 15: pronounces self ready to spend another "ten, twelve, or perhaps twenty years."
  • Jan 16, 12:45pm: dies suddenly of peritonitis, buried in Sheffield family graveyard at the parish church in Sussex. estate valued at £26,000.

• 1796 Mar 31: Sheffield publishes the Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, including his heavily edited collection of Gibbon's Memoirs.