The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon. Printed Verbatim From Hitherto Unpublished mss.

Edward Gibbon was one of the world's greatest historians and a towering figure of his age. When he died in 1794 he left behind the unfinished drafts of his memoirs, which were posthumously edited by his friend Lord Sheffield. Recounting Gibbon's sickly childhood in London, he distils his genius for history into a remarkable gift for autobiography.