Vesuvian Quest is a literary preservation project with a special interest in literature about Pompeii. Ever since the city was rediscovered in the 1700s, writers have been inspired to tell stories about how its people might have lived, or how we might travel back in time to meet the fated inhabitants. The most famous novel to spring from this initial “Pompeiimania” was Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), though it is now out of print despite its many, many reprints over the last two centuries.

Today, we might explore Pompeii through Robert Harris’ novel Pompeii (2003), or Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den (2021) and its two sequels. The Tenth Doctor and Donna fought rock monsters under Vesuvius in Doctor Who: The Fires of Pompeii (2008), and it featured briefly in an episode of Loki (2021). We also saw the eruption on the big screen in Pompeii (2014) starring Kit Harrington. It has been over a decade since we saw a blockbuster movie including Pompeii, but it continues to remain in popular culture.

Here you will find various lists of novels and other works: chronological, by trope and by media type. I also plan to scan a few books from my own collection and add these to archive.org. Pompeii has a highly diverse array of depictions, and it is fascinating to see how these shift over time (Christian fiction was popular in the 1800s, then time travel and romance became more popular post-1900s).

Some fun facts:

• Varney the Vampire, the first literary vampire to have pointed fangs, met his end by throwing himself into Mount Vesuvius
• The author of The Last Days of Pompeii also wrote the famous first line, “It was a dark and stormy night” for which the Bulwer-Lytton writing competition was named
• There are at least 9 books titled In the Shadow of Vesuvius, which include a Victorian mystery, a children’s time travel story, a biography of the two Plinys and a book about Naples’ football team
• The first novel to ever feature a time travel machine (El Anacronópete) included a visit to Pompeii
• There is a children’s book about a Roman inventor called Vesuvius Poovius, but this is his name and the story does not include Pompeii
• Doctor Who: The Fires of Pompeii wasn’t the Doctor’s first trip to Pompeii; he also visited in 2000 audio drama Doctor Who: The Fires of Vulcan (the stories do not contradict each other, so we can imagine Sylvester McCoy is always just out of sight during the TV episode!)