Why am I passionate about this?
As a freelance journalist in Italy, I covered, for Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and others, tough topics: terrorism, the Mafia, the heroin traffic which passed via Sicilian laboratories to the U.S. At a certain point I found this overly negative. After taking a course in Rome on archaeology, by chance I was asked to direct a BBC half-hour documentary on Pompeii. In so doing, I realized that it was time to focus upon the many positive elements of Italian life and history. From that life-changing documentary came this book on Pompeii, on which I worked for five rewarding years. My next book was on historical Venice.
Judith's book list on the joys of life in classical antiquity
Why did Judith love this book?
Edward Bulwer Lytton's influential 19th century novel The Last Days of Pompeii was inspired by a painting he had seen in Milan. He immediately rushed to Pompeii, where his book was published in 1834, by coincidence exactly when Vesuvius erupted. It became an immediate success and is still being published. As Benjamen Disraeli wrote that November, "A trembling spectator, I watched the artists till I was overcome by the phantasma, and was glad to find myself once more in the solitude of my armchair." Available in economic form. The book became an immediate success and is still being adapted to today's media.
1 author picked The Last Days of Pompeii as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was a prolific novelist, poet and playwright in his day; in modern times, his work is considered much as Lovecraft described: “large doses of turgid rhetoric and empty romanticism.”
Originally published in 1834, "The Last Days of Pompeii" itself was probably the first novelization of the catastrophic event. The city was rediscovered in the mid-1700s and archaeological excavations followed soon after. Bulwer-Lytton was inspired to write his novel by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Briullov, painted in the early 1830s.
"The Last Days of Pompeii" tells the story of the Athenian Glaucus, his…