Edward Gibbon, Essai L'etude de al Litterature: A Critical Edition

First edition, first printing. x, 370pp. Stiff card covers with French flaps. 8vo. Very gentle edge wear to slightly shelf worn covers else neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. This copy from the library of renowned Gibbon scholar, Brian Norman. Newspaper clipping with obituary of another Gibbon scholar, John Burrow, loosely laid in. Before Gibbon conceived of the idea of writing his most famous work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, there as a younger man, living in Switzerland and writing in French. This book examines both the man, and one of his major works from that period, Essai, which was first published in a complete edition in 1761.