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A Life of Pliny
by Daisy Dunn
When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, and a teenage nephew who revered him as a father.
Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks―filled with pearls of wisdom―and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Pliny's Letters with extracts from the Elder's Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compellingly readable portrait of two of antiquity's greatest minds.
8 illustrations
"The Roman Empire comes to life through the biographies of two influential men...A sensitive, spirited investigation of the ancient world." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] portrait of the Roman Empire that gives the reader something of the shiver down the spine that Herculaneum can inspire: a sense that we are as close to the vanished world of two millennia ago as we are ever likely to get." - Literary Review (UK)
"Not ideal for those looking for a straightforward biography of Pliny, the book will appeal to readers who are willing to follow Dunn's enthusiastic and vividly drawn, if meandering, story about the lives and influences of both men." - Library Journal
"A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world." - Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live
This information about The Shadow of Vesuvius was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Timothy Foster
Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist and the author of The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation. She read Classics at Oxford before receiving an MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and her PhD from UCL. She lives in London, England. Her website is www.daisydunn.co.uk.
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