Place Name
Edward Gibbon (May 8, 1737 – January 16, 1794) was an essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, has become a standard work on the subject, although not without controversy. Gibbon spent much of his early life in Putney where his family’s home was located at Lime Grove, close to today’s Upper Richmond Road (a plaque commemorates his birthplace). Despite being raise in relatively affluent surroundings in a semi-rural area. Gibbon was a weakly child, his six siblings all died in infancy. He described himself as “a puny child, neglected by my Mother, starved by my nurse”. He attended first Dr Woddeson’s school at Kingston upon Thames and later Westminster School. At the age of 15, he was sent by his father to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner. He was ill-suited, however, to the college atmosphere, and later rued his 14 months there as the “most idle and unprofitable” of his life. Following a spell in Switzerland, he returned to Putney and where he remained until his father died, leaving him a substantial fortune. He moved into town and for a time he represented Liskeard, in Cornwall, first as a Whig and later a Tory. This is one of three streets named after authors with a local connection.
