Once described as " the best-read man in Britain , " Gross was probably best known among his literary peers for his first book , The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters : English Literary Life since 1800 ( 1969 ) , a racily entertaining romp through the history of literary criticism and its practitioners which won the Duff Cooper Prize and established its author 's reputation as a man whose huge erudition was matched by a well-developed sense of humour .