Details

Title

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I

Author

Gibbon, Edward

Publication Date

[1902?]

Publisher

A.L. Burt

Place of Publication

New York

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute.

Donor

Donated by Mary Beth Cavert.

Note

Reading all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ is often regarded as an impressive feat by avid readers. Montgomery read it at least three times. She noted in her journal that she first tackled it in 1907, then again in 1919, and once more in 1926. On each reading, she was struck by the magnitude of the story, writing, “It is a massive work. What millions of men and women have lived and toiled and suffered and succeeded and failed!! What is _one_ among such a multitude? Isn’t it presumptuous even to hope for an individual immortality?” (‘The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, The P.E.I. Years,’ Volume 2, p. 167). The volumes themselves were first published between 1776 and 1789, and Gibbon’s thesis was largely grounded in the Enlightenment age in which he wrote. He contends that the eventual fall of the empire could be blamed, in part, on the lack of certain virtues (moral, civic) among the Roman citizens. Later historians saw Gibbon’s work as a highly literary (i.e., fictionalized) history; Walter Bagehot, Victorian journalist and businessman, said that Gibbon’s “is not a style in which you can tell the truth.” But that did not stop the text from becoming a popular, if not infamous, history of the age. Montgomery inscribed her copy April 2, 1906. The second inscription reads “Cameron Macdonald, Toronto, Ont. May 25/42.” “Cameron,” here, is Montgomery’s son Chester Cameron Macdonald, who often signed his name as “Cameron." He inscribed the book in May of 1942, just one month after her death. The volume also includes a few annotations from Montgomery. On page 275, scanned here, Montgomery has left two small question marks by Gibbon’s fabricated description of Canada: “The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered in deep and lasting snow, and the great river St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are usually free from ice.”

Genre

history

Type of Item

association