Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Factual Questions
1

I can’t seem to find a non abridged version of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Amazon doesn’t always write if a book is abridged. Anyone who can recommend me a non abridged version?

2

Amazon.com have the hard-cover box set for $30 or so.

Fictionwise sells e-book versions pretty cheap.

3

The box set from Everyman’s Library (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679423087/qid=1098875442/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-0551585-6064000?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)?

It doesn’t say so, but it’s abridged.

4

Penguin Books used to sell a one-volume abridgment. Haven’t seen it for sale for a while, but I’ve not been looking for it.

5

Are you missing the box set volume 4-6 when saying it’s abridged? Difficult to tell if it’s the Everyman series but it looks like it. I’m finding the one volume Penguin abridgement enough to digest.

6

This is really very straightforward. To the purists, the best unabridged edition is unquestionably the current Penguin one edited in three volumes by David Womersley. Rather than just reprint one of the older editions, Womersley re-edited the text from scratch to produce what is now widely acknowledged as the standard scholarly version. This might not be that important - most of the differences are so minor you won’t notice anyway - were it not that, as it is available in paperback, this is, for once, a ‘definitive’ edition that’s not too expensive.

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0140433937,00.html
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0140433945,00.html
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0140433953,00.html

The current Penguin abridged version is Womersley’s abridgement of his complete edition.

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0140437649,00.html

7

Ok, got it! Great! I got confused because I mixed up the Penguin Vol I-III and the abridged single volume versions.

I also found this from Routledge:
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Early Sources in Classics S.)
Edward Gibbon, David Womersley (Editor)
ISBN: 041516320X
(4100 pages)

http://www.routledge-ny.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?isbn=041516320X

But with a list price of $1,500! Do you know why that version is so expensive?

8

Doubtless because they knew that most good libraries would want to buy Womersley’s version and that they would want it in hardback.

9

Always scrible, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?

–The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2.