Known widely as the author of ‘Frankenstein’, Mary Shelley horrified us with her notorious monster brought to life with more humanity than we care to admit.
Her later, lesser-known novel ‘The Last Man’ (1826) explores similar thematic concerns, though from a vastly different perspective. The nightmarish story envisions the end of humanity from a ruthless and inescapable plague. Full of heart-wrenching loss, ‘The Last Man tests’ the resilience of humanity, as well as its capacity for sorrow and grief.
Of Shelley’s literary works, ‘The Last Man’ can be seen as the not only the most autobiographical, but also as a literary tribute and memorial to her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley , and Lord Byron amongst other members of her coterie. ‘The Last Man’ is largely shaped by the events of Mary Shelley’s life, and, to a lesser extent, by some of the historical events of Europe during the 1810’s and early 1820’s.
Plot:
The story is discovered, in 1818, in fragments buried in an ancient cave, rumoured to be the cave of the Sybils. The writings contain the recollections of a “past” history occurring well into the future. The writings have been left for future generations as a record of the devastating plague of the late twenty-first century. The narrator is Lionel Verney, age thirty-seven, who is, to his knowledge, the last surviving human on Earth. He has left this record in the year 2100, before setting out to sea…
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