Waugh read both Gibbon and Spengler while writing his first novel. The title alludes also to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918–1922), which first appeared in an English translation in 1926 and which argued, among other things, that the rise of nations and cultures is inevitably followed by their eclipse. The novel's title is a contraction of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s. Decline and Fall is based, in part, on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It was Waugh's first published novel an earlier attempt, titled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928.
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