Can anybody recommend some good catastrophic stories published before, say, 1920?

What is the definition of a catastrophe?

-- The Dead Men of Pest (1807), by John Herman Merivale (vampire plague).
-- The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) by Edward Bulwer Lytton (volcano). I have not read it.
-- The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Alan Poe (building collapse).
-- The Masque of the Red Death (1842) by Edgar Alan Poe (plague).
-- The Mysterious Island (1875), by Jules Verne (volcano) - possibly originating the trope of a newly discovered exotic location being destroyed by a volcano before anyone can visit it again.
-- The Flood (1880), by Emile Zola
-- The War of the Worlds (1898), by H.G. Wells (Alien invasion).
-- The Purple Cloud (1901), by M.P. Shiel (poison gas of volcanic origin).
-- The House on the Borderland (1908), by William Hope Hodgson (maybe does not really count, but it features a giant sinkhole that swallows a large building).
-- The Scarlet Plague (1912), by Jack London (civilization-destroying pandemic)
-- The Terror (1915) by Arthur Machen (nature rebels against man?)
-- The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1920) by H.P. Lovecraft (demons/aliens destroy a city and civilization)
-- Demons of the Sea (1923), by William Hope Hodgson (undersea volcano) presumably written before the author's death in 1919.

Thank you very much for the tips, Platypus. It seems I expressed myself badly or incompletely I would rather say because what I am looking for are stories about nature cataclysms on a large scales that were written in English. It would probably be better to state some examples:

"The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe (Earth is destroyed by a comet)
"The Star" (1897) by H.G. Welles (the world is devastated by many apocalyptic occurences caused by a celestial body flying in the vicinity of Earth)
"Finis" (1906) by Francis Pollock (The rays of a central universal sun reach the planet Earth at last, burning everything)

Minicthulhu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you very much for the tips, Platypus. It
> seems I expressed myself badly or incompletely I
> would rather say because what I am looking for are
> stories about nature cataclysms on a large scales
> that were written in English. It would probably be
> better to state some examples:
>
> "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" (1839) by
> Edgar Allan Poe (Earth is destroyed by a comet)
> "The Star" (1897) by H.G. Welles (the world is
> devastated by many apocalyptic occurences caused
> by a celestial body flying in the vicinity of
> Earth)
> "Finis" (1906) by Francis Pollock (The rays of a
> central universal sun reach the planet Earth at
> last, burning everything)


I'm guessing that by "large scale" you mean "global scale". Or would the sinking of Atlantis count? From a pre-modern perspective, when most do not travel more than a few miles beyond home village, a local catastrophe can seem like the end of the world.
On a global scale, and considering only nature catastrophes, only 2 on my list count:
-- The Scarlet Plague; and
-- The Purple Cloud.

To which I might add:
-- The flood story from the book of Genesis
-- The Book of Revelation
-- The Night Land, by Hodgson (sun goes out, though the focus is on the aftermath, rather than the event itself).