High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) is known primarily as the author of the magisterial The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols., 1776–1789). Both the imposing length of and awesome erudition displayed in that work have understandably overshadowed his other literary achievements, many of which deserve to be noted in their own valuable capacities.