The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by the baron 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. Once a very widely read book and now relatively neglected, it culminates in the cataclysmic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC (25 May 1803 - 18 January 1873), was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling novels which earned him a considerable fortune. He coined several phrases that would become cliches, especially "the great unwashed,""the pen is mightier than the sword," as well as the famous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night.""