Read 66 of 394 pages.

Lovely story and characters though we now know that the description of the eruption in not that faithful...

"The Last Days of Pompeii"is a novel written by the baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. It shouldn't surprise you to know that the novel is about the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, better known as a really, really long time ago. 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. I'm going to look that up in a few minutes. When I looked up the author I found that his entire name was - Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton. I wonder how long it took him to learn all that when he was little and to remember all that when he was older. I don't have the strength to type all that - or the patience - so I'm just calling him Bulwer-Lytton at best. I also found this:

"In August 1827, against his mother's wishes, he married Rosina Doyle Wheeler, a famous Irish beauty. When they married his mother withdrew his allowance and he was forced to work for a living. They had two children, Lady Emily Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton (1828–1848), and (Edward) Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) who became Governor-General and Viceroy of British India (1876–1880).

His writing and political work strained their marriage while his infidelity embittered Rosina; in 1833 they separated acrimoniously and in 1836 the separation became legal. Three years later, Rosina published Cheveley, or the Man of Honour (1839), a near-libellous fiction bitterly satirising her husband's alleged hypocrisy.

In June 1858, when her husband was standing as parliamentary candidate for Hertfordshire, she indignantly denounced him at the hustings. He retaliated by threatening her publishers, withholding her allowance, and denying access to the children. Finally he had her committed to a mental asylum. But, after a public outcry she was released a few weeks later. This incident was chronicled in her memoir, A Blighted Life (1880). For years she continued her attacks upon her husband’s character."

I guess he should have listened to his mother. When he wasn't fighting with his wife he was involved in politics spending too many years (in my opinion anyway) in Parliament. He was elected member for St Ives in Cornwall in 1831, after which he was returned for Lincoln in 1832, and sat in Parliament for that city for nine years. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister at the time, offered him a lordship of the admiralty, but he declined saying it was likely to interfere with his activity as an author. I'm not sure how that would interfere with his writing, but it doesn't really matter because that comment finally gets me to his writing, and he did a lot of writing. He wrote poems and plays, mystery, historical fiction, science fiction, all kinds of things. The book that made him famous was Pelham which I've never read and I'm supposed to be talking about "The Last Days of Pompeii" so I will.

I was wondering if the first line would be as memorable as the first line of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents"

So I got to the first page and read this:

'HO, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?' said a young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb."

Somehow I get the feeling it just isn't quite as well known. I really liked this book, even knowing the ending long before I even opened the book, I still really liked the book. Of course knowing the ending might have helped, I didn't have to worry about being surprised on the last page by having the bad guy kill the hero or some such thing - in this book I already knew where the main character would be at the end of the book. Him and everyone else. But before the big explosion we have lots of people in the story - after all it is a city of about 11,000 people I think, although not all 11,000 get mentioned in the book, except perhaps when they are all in the amphitheatre excited to see people kill each other, those who aren't doing the killing that is.

I had a lot of fun reading this book considering what was about to happen at any minute, it felt like any minute, although it actually took many minutes and many chapters to put an end to Pompeii and everything in it. Not to mention everyone. But there were so many interesting people and so many interesting things they were doing before that last chapter. We have our main character - one of them, who is in love with Ione. Her name drove me crazy, in the book I was reading it was clearly spelled Ione, but on my e-reader it was always spelled with an L at the beginning, not an I. Whatever her name is our main character Glaucus is madly in love with her, and we have Nydia, a slave girl, she's in love with Glaucus, so is Julia, the daughter of Diomed. Oh, he's a wealthy merchant, the one mentioned in that not famous first line.

Ione's brother is Apaecides, he's a priest of Isis, which he hates being (can't say that I blame him seeing how these Isis priests were acting). He manages to get murdered and very quickly the murderer is arrested and thrown in jail waiting to be torn up by a lion at the next gladiatorial games. Now one of the things we get to do is to figure out if they are about to feed the right guy to the lion or do they have the wrong guy?

See, it's become a mystery, a mystery that better get cleared up quickly because they have more to worry about than a lion. Oh, and we have one of the many women in love with Glaucus going to the witch who lives in the mountain - in a cave at the side of it, not actually in it, she gets a potion that will make Glaucus fall in love with her. It really doesn't matter if it works or not considering they are only two days or so away from everyone being dead, but you'll have to read the book to find out. There's also Olinthus, he's a Christian or a Nazarene, which ever you want to call him. No one likes him, they say he's an atheist for not believing in at least one of the about 100 gods they have in this town. He's being fed to the wild animals too, not a lion though, he's only getting a tiger.

Then there is Arbaces, by far the worst person in the book. This guy never does anything nice for anyone - ever. At one time he has three people locked up, one of them is blind, another is a priest, and he has them locked up in his house because he's just a mean, horrible person. Well, there's a little more to it than that, but not much. Any time the lava wants to cover this guy is alright with me. Here are some of the quotes that I underlined, well I would have if I could bring myself to write in a book:

"Despite the habits of his life, Sallust was not devoid of many estimable qualities. He would have been an active friend, a useful citizen—in short, an excellent man, if he had not taken it into his head to be a philosopher."

"On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat women, their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flower-bed; it is needless to add that they were the most talkative part of the assembly; and many were the looks directed up to them, especially from the benches appropriated to the young and the unmarried men. On the lower seats round the arena sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors—the magistrates and those of senatorial or equestrian dignity; the passages which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to these seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages prevented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which the seats gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and paintings wrought in fresco, typical of the entertainments for which the place was designed. Throughout the whole building wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced, cooling and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spectators."

"Still, it was an awful and imposing spectacle, with which modern times have, happily, nothing to compare—a vast theatre, rising row upon row, and swarming with human beings, from fifteen to eighteen thousand in number, intent upon no fictitious representation—no tragedy of the stage—but the actual victory or defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of each and all who entered the arena! "

"Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his quick-eyed antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him through the breast. Berbix reeled and fell.

'Nobilior! Nobilior!' shouted the populace.

'I have lost ten sestertia,' said Clodius, between his teeth.

'Habet!—he has it,' said Pansa, deliberately.

The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy; but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness came too late—the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were set in death. It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over the sand and sawdust of the arena.

'It is a pity it was so soon over—there was little enough for one's trouble,' said the widow Fulvia."

And that's it, the rest of the story you should either know, or you can read the book to find out. I wanted more, I wanted to know who ends up with Ione and who ends up with Glaucus, and if Arbaces ever stops doing horrible things to people, for that matter does he ever let the people he has locked up in his house go free? There may be one or two surprises out there, after all, does every single person die or does one or two manage to escape? Does Glaucus die, Ione, Nydia? What about the lion, read the book to find out, I can't remember where the lion ended up anyway. I may have given the book five stars, which takes a lot, but the descriptions of houses and gardens and baths and such got a little long, and people breaking out into song or reciting poetry, not only feeling it necessary to sing or say every single verse, but the author felt the need to write down every single verse, that got a little tiring after awhile. I still liked it. A long, long time after Pompeii was destroyed people got around to digging it up again, the people of Pompeii must have liked painting their walls, here is some of wall art they found:




Happy reading.

I hated this book. It was torture to read and the plot wasn't any good. I read it for a 19th century Brit lit class, but I've never read any other 19th century Brit lit quite like it. Unless you must read it, avoid this book like the plague.

This was actually really good. Considering this is the same guy who famously wrote "It was a dark and stormy night...". A good historical novel, and by some accounts, the first in that genre.

Fascinated me! Revealed how the people of Pompeii lived, what their daily lives were like. As the author describes the volcano erupting, I felt that I was right there and could feel what the people felt. I read this way before there was much information out or any movies made so it was just mind boggling to me! Made me want to visit and see the ruins.

I tried to read this in elementary school, but failed. I tried again in jr high and succeeded. I was better off in elementary school.

Como o nome do livro sugere, trata-se de uma novela passada na cidade de Pompeia antes da erupção do Vesúvio (no ano 79 d.C.). Bulwer-Lytton aproveita o contexto histórico para explorar de forma muito superficial a relação da antiga Grécia com o subjugador império Romano, bem como para caricaturar o emergir do cristianismo por entre os outros cultos pagãos. A ideia do livro parece-me interessante, isto é, a de criar uma história cujo desfecho seria marcado por um evento histórico. Contudo, o enredo e a narração são muito simples, tornando o livro simultaneamente fácil e irrelevante.

A depiction of the events leading up to Pompeii's last moments

It is written in an older English style than we speak nowadays. This would be hard ti understand with someone unfamiliar with this vernacular. Also it would take a lot of research to understand all of the references the author is using. In the end, it is worth a read.

One of my favorite novels is Zanoni, by this same author; it was mentioned by Rudolf Steiner as an example of a Rosicrucian tale. That made me interested in reading more of his work.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton hasn't aged well; in his day he was apparently more popular than Dickens or Austin but he's largely unknown today. He lived large financing a lavish lifestyle from his extraordinary volume of novels, plays and poems. Lytton also influenced popular culture, including mens formal wear. He was so widely read in the early 19th century that his words became well-known phrases including "the pen is mightier than the sword", "the plot thickens", "unwashed masses" etc. He's also mockingly known as the author who opened a novel with "It was a dark and stormy night...". There's no question his style is more suited to the florid literary tastes of his day.

The Last Days of Pompeii is one of his more famous novels; it's been made into at least 4 movies, for example, and was widely read in its day. It's historical fiction, a commentary on the collision of Roman, Greek and Egyptian cultures in the first century, a romance, and an exploration of religion and mysticism. Great stuff, pretty meaty and sometimes an effort to read but very rewarding.

gearing up for my DC trip, ruins from Pompeii are on display (loan) at the National Gallery through the end of the year... yay!