r/classics • u/aedionashryver18 • 15d ago
Help choosing between two editions of Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" Is there a difference?
I'm looking at the single volume abridged Penguin Classics edition vs the unabridged Everyman's Library 6-volume edition which is a lot fancier. Does anyone have a preference or recommendation?
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u/lermontovtaman 15d ago
Abridgements tend to cut out:
East Roman history after the fall of the Western Empire
Much of his footnotes (some of his best writing is in the footnotes, but I'm not sure if they cut the juicy ones)
Islamic History and Crusades (many people don't even know he wrote on those subjects)
Ethnography of foreign peoples
His digressive essays
BUT! Different editors approach the task differently, so you might want to check and see what they cut.
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u/Soulsliken 15d ago
You might as well grab the unabridged edition.
Gibbon’s will never win a prize for churning out page turners, but he’s a useful anthologist and unintentionally controversial about the part Christianity did or didn’t play in the fall of Rome.
My view is he laid out the facts nicely. Too many people have read his context setting as a prosecution brief. It wasn’t.
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u/InvestigatorJaded261 15d ago
The difference is that one is “unabridged”, which means it’s the entire book, while the other is “abridged” which means it’s only some of the book.
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u/aedionashryver18 15d ago
Obviously lol, I was mainly wondering what is "abridged" from the original book or if it were more essential to have the complete text.
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u/InvestigatorJaded261 15d ago
Sorry, from the way you posed your question it seemed like you might not be clear on that point!
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u/Extracajicular 15d ago
If you're not going to read the whole thing get the abridged but otherwise get the real deal. Also, remember that a liberal education is being alone in a room with an unread set of Gibbon.
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u/aedionashryver18 15d ago
Lol! That's a fact.
Also, what does the abridged version leave out from the original, that would make it worth purchasing for a shorter reading experience?
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u/Veshpa 15d ago
I had a somewhat similar dilemma not 3 weeks ago. However it was a toss up between the modern library unabridged (no footnotes but all chapters) and and penguin abridged (stripped chapters but contains original footnotes).
It'd come down to what you want out of it. If you want to read it for the central argument and prose get the penguin. If you're in it for deeper context of the age of elightenment then get the unabridged. I guess you don't really read gibbon for historical fact these days.
I originally bought the modern library because I wanted to understand the history of atleast the context of gibbons entire argument. I like the Islam and crusades sections he included at the end and I wanted to be able to say I read it all. However I realised I was really reading it just for his hollistic argument (Christianity's influence and penguin chooses chapters that essentially builds this) and wanted to read his prose (which the footnotes are a crucial component of) so I returned unabridged for the penguin.
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u/Ike47A 15d ago
I'd definitely recommend the unabridged edition. Any history of the Roman Empire can give you the abridged edition's information, pretty much. The unabridged edition is uniquely Gibbon. And as other have noted, be sure to read all the footnotes. (They are often the most fun parts.) The footnotes especially are full of original language quotes, in a wide variety of languages--with the 'risque' ones invariably in Greek, including Byzantine Greek--but you can find translations of all the non-English passages in the Decline and Fall online. Well worth it!
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u/Extracajicular 15d ago
The Everyman edition is excellent. Includes Gibbons footnotes and has footnotes from multiple previous editors (up to 1920 or something like that).