The Shadow of Vesuvius. Pompeii AD 79

(London: Michael Joseph, 1976) 0718115570. 4to; original blue boards, lettered in gilt on spine; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pictorial endpapers; pp. 128; profusely illustrated, in colour and monochrome. Short tear to top edge of dustwrapper's lower panel; a little light spotting; gift inscription to front endpaper. Very good condition. "The turn of fate which revealed the lost cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum began in 1710 when a peasant, digging a well, struck marble from the theatre of Herculaneum. The discoveries in the two centuries that followed produced a revolution in artistic taste, affecting furniture, decoration and art in the whole civilized world. Raleigh Trevelyan's vivid narrative gives a striking personal impression of this ghostly city. He gives, too, an entertaining history of the slow unfinished striptease of time which gradually, tantalizingly, is revealing one of the greatest storehouses of treasures the world has seen, the source of much of our knowledge of daily life in the Roman world. The book is enriched by many magnificent colour plates - a mixture of nineteenth century paintings and prints, and present-day photographs of Pompeii." .