A piece of Victorian science fiction considered first tale of urban apocalypse

Another early example of this, although five years later in 1885, was Richard Jefferies' "After London". It basically created the conceit that many works of science fiction used later -- the book is set in what appears to be a medieval society only for the reader to learn later that this isn't the past but the future after industrial civilization destroyed itself by pollution.

If you're interested in the history that provided the jumping-off point for this story, a good overview can be found in Lee Jackson's 2014 book Dirty Old London (https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392332431/dirty-old-london-a-...), which goes into great detail on Victorian London's long struggle to clean up its filthy streets, air and water.

There's some remarkable apocalyptic imagery out and about from even earlier in the 19th century. Check out Samuel Colman's "The Edge of Doom" (a decent reproduction at https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/colman_edgedoom...) for a striking example. From the Brooklyn Museum's write-up:

"In The Edge of Doom, Samuel Colman paints the ultimate disaster: the destruction of the world. Lightning was particularly suited for evoking the emotions of awe and terror associated with the Sublime notion of nature. Here, it strikes erratically, blasting classical buildings, carriages, paintings, and even Time (a figure with an hourglass and scythe) to create a central glowing void. All that survives is the memorial sculpture of William Shakespeare, then and now on view in London’s Westminster Abbey."

- https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4811

On one hand, this has to have been a British communication of contemporaneous Caspar David Friedrich sublime, but there also must have been something brewing in industrial London to create fear of impending absolute destruction, and this doesn't read as Biblical wrath to me.

> It imagines the entire population of London choked to death under a soot-filled fog. The story is told by the event’s lone survivor sixty years later as he recalls “the greatest calamity that perhaps this earth has ever witnessed” at what was, for Hay’s first readers, the distant future date of 1942.

He was 10 years out... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

(and a few orders of magnitude of survivor numbers tbf)

I'm not religious, but I am a voracious reader, and I think Revelations from the Old Testament is probably going to predate this apocalyptic story by more than 6000 years. For a more specifically urban tale of apocalypse, there's Sodom and Gomorrah:

"Sodom and Gomorrah, notoriously sinful cities in the biblical book of Genesis, destroyed by 'sulfur and fire' because of their wickedness (Genesis 19:24)"

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/place/Sodom-and-Gomorrah

Most 'modern' stories have either biblical, Greek, or mythological roots. Apocalyptic themes have always been a big seller, e.g., Jesus of Nazareth predicted a second coming that would not be a pleasant experience. In scholarly circles, he's known as emerging from a group of apocalyptic prophets, which were common for his time.