Gibbon

1968 · ref. 139748 — London: Collins 1968. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. London Collins 1968. Octavo 1040 pages. Cloth a little bumped at the extremities; endpapers a little foxed; edges slightly marlked; a very good copy internally excellent with the excellent dustwrapper slightly bumped. Edward Gibbon Wakefield 1796-1862 author and colonial promoter 'was an enigma to his contemporaries as he is to posterity. Denied office by his criminal record in 1827 he was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Newgate he devoted his energy to schemes for systematic colonization and responsible government. Not content only to influence men's minds by his pen he sought directly to influence their actions as well. His personal magnetism and imaginative zeal won him many converts but much disappointment when he found that people could not be controlled like puppets. His idealism would not allow him to compromise and when he ignored the principles of others their reactions were often bitter. In his restless search to achieve his objectives he ranged through the whole spectrum of English politics and society utilitarian radicals Whigs and High Church Tories and left behind him some claim to success in penal reform immigration to New South Wales the Durham report and the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand. The factious conclusion to his career and his obscure death have given to his life a certain tragic perspective although some writers have credited him with high rank as an architect of the British Commonwealth' 'Australian Dictionary of Biography'. Collins hardcover