Decline and Fall was first published by Chapman and Hall in England in 1928. It was the author’s debut novel; he had written an earlier work of fiction in 1924 called The Temple at Thatch, but had burned the manuscript in 1925 after his friend and writer, Harold Acton, had strongly criticised it. Waugh lapsed into a period of deep depression and even determined to end his own life, before having second thoughts about it. In time, he regained his self-confidence and once more started to believe in his abilities as a novelist. The title of the work references Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West. The novel was partially inspired by the author’s observations while attending the boarding school Lancing College and his later experiences at Oxford University.