The Last Man

First published in 1826, Mary Shelley’s The Last Man is a haunting work of speculative fiction set in a future world gradually devastated by a mysterious plague. Beginning in the late twenty-first century, the novel follows Lionel Verney and a circle of friends whose private hopes and political ambitions unfold against the collapse of civilisation. Among them are Adrian, a principled and idealistic statesman, and Raymond, a charismatic figure drawn towards power and military glory; their intertwined lives lend the narrative both the intimacy of personal tragedy and the scale of historical catastrophe.

Blending Romantic idealism, political reflection and apocalyptic vision, Shelley’s novel explores mortality, isolation, the fragility of human institutions and the limits of progress. Its imagined future becomes a means of contemplating the anxieties of her own age, while the emotional force of the narrative is deepened by its meditation on friendship, grief and the persistence of memory. Long overshadowed by Frankenstein, The Last Man is now recognised as a pioneering work of apocalyptic literature and one of Shelley’s most ambitious examinations of humanity confronting its own possible extinction.

From the book

“We are all alike the children of a woman, and the same fate awaits us all.”

— Mary Shelley, The Last Man

On The Last Man

“The Last Man is an important prototype for the post-apocalyptic genre.”

— Scholarly commentary on Mary Shelley’s The Last Man