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“Essay on the Study of Literature-Edward Gibbon” Name: Institution: Essay on the Study of Literature-Edward Gibbon The article is an “English translation of the Essai sur l’étude de la littérature” that was majorly written by Edward Gibbon. Gibbon wrote the piece in the late 1750s, and the work got published eleven years later in London (Mankin, n.d. ., 2016). At the time of this publication, Gibbon was just 24 years old (Mankin, n.d. ., 2016). In 1974, an English version of his work was produced in London again. Gibbon was quite critical of this inept English translation. Moreover, in the mid-1760s, Gibbon already had his mind set on other projects like what later came to be known as “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776, 1781, 1788)” (Mankin, n.d. ., 2016). Due to the fame of the new work, people pirated the Essai two times in Dublin, in the original French version in 1777, and in another English version a year later. However, in 1777, Gibbon dismissed the piracy as an “ouvrage de Jeunesse” (Mankin, n.d, 2016). A talented writer produced a new English version which was relatively easier to read than the previous translations and had minimal French. This paper summarizes the main ideas of Robert Mankin’s English translation of Gibbon’s work. Towards the end of his introduction paragraph, Mankin admits that the Essai deserved more attention to style than he awarded. However, he also mentions that he presumes that anyone who is interested in wordplay and style will make an effort of finding the original version. Mankin’s work is almost a full translation of the as published in 1761, as he says, he only omitted
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