Gipson, Lawrence Henry [key], 1880–1971, American historian, b. Greeley, Colo. A Rhodes scholar, he received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1918 and taught at several schools before becoming (1924) professor of history and head of the department of history and government at Lehigh Univ. In 1947 he became research professor of history at Lehigh. Gipson became an outstanding authority on the British Empire in the 18th cent., especially, although not exclusively, on its American colonies. His outstanding work, The British Empire before the American Revolution (15 vol., 1936–70), designed to be a comprehensive study, has earned a distinguished place in American historical writing. In 1962 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for one of these volumes, The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1733–66 (1961). Other of his works include Some Reflections upon the American Revolution and Other Essays in American Colonial History (1942); The Coming of the Revolution, 1763–1775 (1954, in the “New American Nation” series).
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