Books
Pompeii served as the background for the historic novels The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (since adapted for film and TV), Arria Marcella (1852) by Théophile Gautier, The Taras Report on Pompeii (1975) by Alan Lloyd as well as appearing in Shadows in Bronze (1990) and other novels in the Marcus Didius Falco series.
Book I of the Cambridge Latin Course teaches Latin while telling the story of a Pompeii resident, Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, from the reign of Nero to that of Vespasian. The book ends when Mount Vesuvius erupts, where Caecilius and his household are killed. The books have a cult following and students have been known to go to Pompeii just to track down Caecilius's house.
Louis Untermeyer wrote the short story, "The Dog of Pompeii", which centered on a blind orphan boy and his dog during the last days before Vesuvius erupted.
A number of titles in The Roman Mysteries series of children's historical novels by Caroline Lawrence are set in Pompeii.
The 2003 bestseller novel Pompeii by Robert Harris tells the story of a (fictional) aquarius of the real life Aqua Augusta named Marcus Attilius. The story itself also features a Pliny the Younger reference to the Estate of Julia Felix, as well as also including the Piscina Mirabalis in Misenum, Pliny the Elder, and his nephew Gaius Pliny.
Read more about this topic: Pompeii In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word books:
“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“... a phallocentric culture is more likely to begin its censorship purges with books on pelvic self-examination for women or books containing lyrical paeans to lesbianism than with See Him Tear and Kill Her or similar Mickey-Spillanesque titles.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)
“Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)