The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

London is the true first and there is no competing original-language or foreign edition - Gibbon wrote in English and Strahan and Cadell printed it. The census claim of "three printings that year" for vol. I is inexact and is corrected here: vol. I went through a second edition dated June 1776 and a third edition before vol. II appeared in 1781, so two editions bear an 1776 date and only the February issue is the first. Because the six volumes appeared across twelve years, mixed sets are the normal trap - sets offered as first editions frequently carry a second-edition vol. I - so every volume must be collated and dated on its own.