The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. The novel was inspired by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov, which Bulwer-Lytton had seen in Milan. It culminates in the cataclysmic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
First edition title page
The Last Day of Pompeii, Karl Bryullov
Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl by Randolph Rogers
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. A noted philhellene, Bulwer-Lytton was offered the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated, but he declined. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Bulwer-Lytton. His Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848) was the source for Verdi's opera Aroldo.
Bulwer-Lytton in later life
Caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1870