 His decision to retire to England placed him out of the public eye, while his mental deterioration and early death deprived him of the opportunity to dictate his own legacy.Writers interested in the post-Federation era did not generally view him as an attractive biographical subject, which has been attributed to the relative orthodoxy of his political views and a reputation for propriety to the point of dullness.Fisher's 1981 entry in the "Australian Dictionary of Biography" was written by Denis Murphy, who had planned a full-length biography but died in 1984 before completing it.