Gibbon and the 'Watchmen of the Holy City'

The publication of the first volume of The Decline and Fall in 1776 immediately embroiled Gibbon in a dispute concerning his supposed irreligion. This book follows the implications and ramifications of Gibbon's sudden notoriety to recover the historian's experience of himself as author. It traces Gibbon's attempts to control, to manipulate, and at times to avail himself of, his public reputation from his first, silent, engagement with his critics when he revised the text of the first volume of The Decline and Fall, to that unfinished masterpiece of self-presentation, the Memoirs of My Life....

The publication of the first volume of The Decline and Fall in 1776 immediately embroiled Gibbon in a dispute concerning his supposed irreligion. This book follows the implications and ramifications of Gibbon's sudden notoriety to recover the historian's experience of himself as author. It traces Gibbon's attempts to control, to manipulate, and at times to avail himself of, his public reputation from his first, silent, engagement with his critics when he revised the text of the first volume of The Decline and Fall, to that unfinished masterpiece of self-presentation, the Memoirs of My Life. It also shows how the debate about Gibbon's alleged hostility to Christianity shaped the posthumous publication of his Miscellaneous Works by his friend and literary executor, Lord Sheffield.