The Last Man

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Book Overview

A futuristic story of tragic love and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague, The Last Man is Mary Shelley's most important novel after Frankenstein. With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters.

About the Series: For...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199552355
• ISBN13: 9780199552351
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Mary Shelley

The Last Man by Mary Shelley If you are a fan of Mary Shelley, then you will definetely enjoy this novel. Awesome ebook!

Let His Death Crown His Life!

I am in ethereal love with Mary Shelley. Why is her literary importance and fancy not uplifted more than it is? I grimace whenever I go to a bookstore and glance each time at the Mary Shelley section to find only Frakenstein. She has other great books probably not many people know about. Such is the case in The Last Man. I thought Frankenstein was about as sad as one could allow a character to feel but after reading The Last Man Mary out does herself by really putting poor Verney in a pickle. This story really tugged at me hard and actually made me feel for the characters in a way so few books or movies ever have. If you know about Mary Shelley and have read Frankenstein or anything else by this, I feel, greatest author to have ever put word to paper, then you MUST read this beautiful accounting of "the last year of the world". It astonished me to find out that the book was out of print from 1833 to 1965. Wow! I failed to compare the story to such contemporary biological warfare or AIDS for that matter and took the story's meaning for what Shelley may have wanted to get across during her time that had neither. I believe she wants to almost persuade us of a deeper level of human condition and compassion by taking us as low as we can and then allowing us to constantly strive upward from that awful place she leaves Verney. Please, read more of Mary Shelley.

Death and disease level all men

This novel is a combination of a `roman à clefs' and science fiction, with gothic and autobiographic elements. In her vision of the end of the 21st century, Mary Shelley sees the Greek occupying Istanbul and England as a republic with three political parties (royalists, democrats and aristocrats). The leader of the democrats deserts his responsibilities through fear of the plague, while the intention of the head of the aristocrats (a highly idealized portrait of P.B. Shelley) is `to diminish the power of the aristocracy to effect a greater equalization of wealth and privilege and to introduce a perfect system of republican government.' Byron (Lord Raymond) is not in the same league: `Power was the aim of all his endeavors. The selected passion was ambition.' Her vision of mankind is pessimistic: `There was but one good and one evil in the world - life and death.' For life, `The choice is with us; let us will it and our habitation becomes a paradise.' But, `What is there in our nature that is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery? We are not formed for enjoyment; disappointment is the never-failing pilot of our life's bark, and ruthlessly carries us to the shoals.' `It is a strange fact, but incontestable, that the philanthropist, who ardent in his desire to do good, who disdains other argument than truth, has less influence over men's mind than he who refuses not to adopt any means, nor diffuse any falsehood for the advancement of his cause.' Man doesn't control his destiny and the whole of mankind is wiped out by the plague. But, even on the verge of total destruction, false prophets preach intolerance with their `pernicious doctrines of election and special grace'. This book is brilliantly written: `He was no longer bent to the ground, like an over-nursed flower of spring that, shooting up beyond its strength, is weighed down even by its own coronal of blossoms.' It has a few minus points: slow progression, too idealized main characters and a rather too simplistic cause of the whole destruction of mankind. But, it remains a real discovery and a very worth-while read, with an excellent introduction by Pamela Bickley. Many novels have the plague as subject. I recommend highly `Bassompierre' by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

The Last Man by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

The book chronicles a great global plague which annihilates the world except for one man who describes the world's demise. The work was first published in 1826. It was out-of-print from 1833 through 1965 and has been widely read thereafter. Shelley's "Last Man" has been resurrected due to the tremendous interest in potential plagues like bird disease, global warming, continental earth movements, super hurricanes and out-of-control comets randomly threatening the earth of the future on a periodic basis. Even Nostradamos talked about the world's end in the year 3797. The volume is written in the English literature of the 1800s. The language is superior. In spots, the vocabulary is of the highest order. Here is a sample: " She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the waters of the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind, and a purling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through poplar-shaded banks into the lake. " Another unforgetable passage reminds us of Shelley's poetic nature interwoven into the overall story. Details follow: "The golden splendour arose, and weary nature awoke to suffer yet another day of heat and thirsty decay. No flowers lifted up their dew laden cups to meet the dawn; the dry grass had withered on the plains; the burning fields of air were vacant of birds; the cicale alone, children of the sun, began their shrill and deafening song among the cypresses and olives. " Just prior to the year 2100, Shelley paves the way for the chaos in the making. A sample paragraph describes the apprehension in the wind: " This was not universal. Among better natures, anguish and dread, the fear of eternal separation, and the awful wonder produced by unprecedented calamity, drew closer to the ties of kindred and friendship. Philosophers opposed their principles, as barriers to the inundation of profligacy or despair , and the only ramparts to protect the invaded territory of human life; the religious, hoping now for their reward, clung fast to their creeds, as the rafts and planks which over the tempest- vexed sea of suffering, would bear them in safety to the harbour of the Unknown Continent. " Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published a number of memorable works around the time of "The Last Man". Her other works were: - Perkin Warbeck in 1830--the author's fourth novel - Lodore is published in 1835. - Faulker is published in 1837 On February 1, 1851, Mary Shelley died.

A beautiful book.

True imagination and a wonderfully written tale of a tortured man. I thought Frankenstein was a powerfully depressing book of a man's loss of self, but Shelley tops herself with this gothic masterpiece (POOR VERNEY). Don't let Shelley's critics fool you. Give this book a try.