Before he had even conceived of the Decline and fall of

the Roman Empire there was another Edward Gibbon, a

young expatriate living in Switzerland and writing in

French. In the Essai , a work of remarkable erudition

and energy largely finished by the age of twenty-one,

Gibbon reflects on the present state of knowledge in

post-Renaissance Europe - what he calls littérature.

The first complete edition of the Essai since 1761, this

volume sets Gibbon's work in its intellectual context.

A detailed introduction examines the biographical,

cultural and historical background to this text: the

young writer's perception of European intellectual

life as he observed it from Lausanne, his relation to

the Encyclopédie and the French académies , the fate of

erudition, and the modern organization of learning in

books. An extensive commentary concludes this edition,

providing invaluable annotation of each chapter,

including the important but little-known sections on

religion that were replaced by Gibbon in the final text.

As current debates revisit the meaning of

Enlightenment, readers will find in this edition of

Gibbon's Essai a new approach to the intellectual

networks and tensions that lie at its heart.