"Womersley has produced a signally effective study of the various processes which create an authorial reputation, assiduously demonstrating how careful documentary reconstruction can restore the rich textuality of a writer's life. This is a major contribution not only to Gibbon scholarship but also to methodology."-- Review of English Studies "Embodies very high standards of scholarship and critical acumen. [Womersley] has traced a story not likely to be seriously improved upon for many decades to come. -- Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 "Erudite and absorbing. David Womersley has written an important book; it greatly increases our sense of the ways in which Gibbon's self-fashioning went on within the pages of his major works. Womersley has taken us where none have ventured before, in showing Gibbon as a Bowdler-like censor of his own ongoing productions."-- Times Literary Supplement "To appreciate Gibbon the historian, read the magisterial Decline and Fall ; to know Gibbon the man behind the history, read the Memoirs and the Letters ; to understand Gibbon the author, and the growth of his literary reputation, read this book by Womersley.

"-- Virginia Quarterly Review "This brilliant and careful work.contains much of permanent value for any student of Gibbon."-- Choice "Womersley's analyses are subtle, original, and valuable. In addition to its value for those interested in Gibbon's work, this book is a significant contribution to the discussion of eighteenth-century controversial writing, belonging on the shelf with Joseph Levine's The Battle of the Books .-- Albion.