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:
“An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards—their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble—the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.””
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)