Biography of Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was born in 1737 in London.  His brothers and sisters died in infancy and it seems that her mother was distant at best.  He was sickly while young and he took refuge in books, especially history books.
When he was 15 he went to Oxford to spend time at Magdalen College.  Stories differ but it seems that there he became acquainted with deist and rationalist thought.  He objected to it and converted to Roman Catholicism.  His father sent him to Switzerland and shortly after threatened to disinherit him if he didn't go back to the Protestants. 
Gibbon served a stint in the military during the Seven Year's War.  In 1763 he went on a Grand Tour of Europe.  While there he visited the 'great object of my pilgrimage', that of the city Rome.  He there had what he called his 'Capitoline vision', the idea of constructing an extensive history of Rome and the Roman empire. 
In 1776, Gibbon released the first volume of 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'.  It became very popular.  He released the next five volumes over the next twelve years.  Wikipedia quotes him upon finishing:

It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. ... I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

 Gibbon was active in London's literary society.  He rubbed shoulders with such people as Adam Smith and Horace Walpole.  His health declined and he died in 1794 at the age of 56.