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    The Last Man
    The Last Man
    The Last Man
    Ebook615 pages10 hours

    The Last Man

    By Mary Shelley

    3/5

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    From the author of Frankenstein comes this apocalyptic tale of a world devastated by plague. Mary Shelley's 1826 roman à clef takes place in the late twenty-first century, as England's last king abdicates and a charmed circle of idealistic political reformers plunges into a maelstrom of war, pestilence, and anarchy. 
    Shelley wrote this gripping novel after the untimely deaths of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their comrade, Lord Byron. She modeled a pair of characters on the charismatic poets and based the narrator — the sole survivor of a pandemic — on her own persona. This parable of humanity's destruction by plague is widely regarded as a repudiation of Romanticism and its failure to solve the world's problems through art and philosophy. It reflects the ways utopian ideals, unchecked by moral and ethical standards, can shatter society. 
    Misunderstood by nineteenth-century readers, Shelley's visionary novel disappeared for over a century, only to reemerge to critical acclaim as a precursor of science fiction and a forerunner of modern apocalyptic tales. Novelist Muriel Spark hailed it as the harbinger of "an entirely new genre, compounded of the domestic romance, the Gothic extravaganza, and the sociological novel," and pronounced it Shelley's "most interesting, if not her consummate work."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 13, 2012
    ISBN9780486118390
    Author

    Mary Shelley

    Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in 1797, the daughter of two of the leading radical writers of the age. Her mother died just days after her birth and she was educated at home by her father and encouraged in literary pursuits. She eloped with and subsequently married the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but their life together was full of hardship. The couple were ruined by disapproving parents and Mary lost three of her four children. Although its subject matter was extremely dark, her first novel Frankenstein (1818) was an instant sensation. Subsequent works such as Mathilda (1819), Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826) were less successful but are now finally receiving the critical acclaim that they deserve.

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    Reviews for The Last Man

    3/5

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    • 4/5
      Review from BadelyngeIt seems like I've been reading Mary Shelley's The Last Man all year. I'm not the fastest of readers but whenever I read poetry I read even slower. The Last Man isn't poetry but it is written using poetic prose, which keeps tricking me into thinking I'm reading an epic poem. The primary characters are based on Shelley's recently deceased husband poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and herself (although personified by the eponymous male character). The woman can write some. The novel really shines when the story finally concludes on its note of tragic isolation. Unfortunately to get to this brilliant finale of loss you have to first present fully what is being lost. Shelley spends over half of the book setting this up and it is, admittedly quite a slog. And then the plague hits. This part of the book is unrelentingly morbid in what it depicts although Shelley's writing and exploration of themes and ideas during this section are delivered with great acuity. If I'd been aware how dark much of the book was going to be after such a long set up I would probably have given the book a miss. I'm glad I read it though because the writing is so good on certain levels but it is often rather daunting in its density.
    • 3/5
      This one had a (very) few interesting elements, and the account of the plague overwhelming the world was pretty chilly ... but overall, hardly a surprise this this novel has been largely forgotten.
    • 2/5
      Do not recommend - Interesting as a concept and as a historical document, less interesting as a novel. It's a book Shelley wrote years after Frankenstein, considered the first apocalyptic plague novel (a book about humanity wiped out by disease and its repercussions), and it is really interesting in that sense that even 300 years later our zombie and other plague novels really do still use similar mechanics and models even with our more advanced technology and scientific understanding of disease. That said, it's a hard one to read, especially as half of the novel is more of a gentleman's prolonged coming-of-age story and even once the plague hits most of the interesting developments are dryly summarized; it's a very different style of writing, and one that is difficult for a modern reader to connect to.
    • 1/5
      I love reading classic literature and science fiction as well, so when I stumbled upon this book I thought I was in for a real treat. Wrong. It's very rare that I don't finish a book once I start it, but I just couldn't hang tough with this one. Trying to dig a stubborn splinter out of the bottom of your toe is more enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      A strange, unsettling story, supposedly a "lesser" work by Mary Shelley but I vastly preferred it to Frankenstein. Possibly because one of the characters consists of MWS doing her best Byron impersonation, which is pretty entertaining. All in all, not a brilliant book, but densely packed with images, themes, and contradictions that make it a treasure trove for analysis.
    • 3/5
      The Last Man is indeed a game of two halves. The majority of the first half contains some of the most gushing romantic prose/twaddle that I have ever read. Here is the scenario: It is the year 2073 and Lionel and his sister Perdita are living by their wits in the mountains of Cumbria (England) after the death of their father who was banished from court by the late king of England. Adrian has abdicated in favour of a democratic government and retires to Cumbria where he meets and befriends Lionel and takes him under his wing. Lionel falls in love with Adrian's sister Idris, but must fight for her because Lord Raymond has returned from the Greek-Turkish wars and wants to marry Idris as a stepping stone to proclaiming himself the new king. Perdita falls in love with Lord Raymond who agrees to marry her leaving Lionel free to marry Idris. Lord Raymond's political and personal ambition knows no bounds and he manages to get himself elected as Lord Protector of England. Later he discovers Evadne a Greek lady living in poverty in London who he has known before, he becomes infatuated and when Perdita finds out she vows never to see him again. Lord Raymond goes back to Greece and is soon leading their army on a final assault on Constantinople. It is easy to conclude that Mary Shelley has based her character; Lord Raymond on her friend Lord Byron and that Adrian is Percy Shelley. Here is an example of the prose as Lionel describes his impressions of Adrian:"Nor was it I alone who fell thus intimately his perfections. His sensibility and courtesy fascinated everyone. His vivacity, intelligence, and active spirit of benevolence, completed the conquest. Even at an early age he was deep read and imbued with the spirit of high philosophy. This tone gave an irresistible persuasion to his intercourse with others so that he seemed like an inspired musician, who struck with unerring skill, the "lyre of mind" and produced then divine harmony. In person he hardly appeared of this world; his slight frame was overinformed by the soul that dwelt within; he was all mind "Man but a rush against" his breast, and it would have conquered his strength; but the might of his smile would have tamed an hungry lion, or caused a legion of armed men to lay their weapons at his feet."There is much of this stuff to read through as Shelley creates her fantasy world of Lionel, Adrian, Lord Raymond, Perdita and Idris living an unworldly existence in the castle of Windsor, popping out from time to time to deal with the business of ruling the Country. It could be an early draft for a novel written by Jeffrey ArcherThere are claims that this novel should be classed as Science Fiction, but there is no Science here only fiction. The year 2073 is just like the year 1826 when the novel was published. People still travel on horseback, candles provide lighting, there have been no advances in medicine, communication, etc etc........ This is a novel of high Romance but it does turn very dark in the second half and the high flown romanticism is less obvious; in fact Shelley's prose is much more suited to her subject and the book becomes a fascinating hybrid.Back to the story: Lord Raymond's assault on Constantinople is carried out almost single handedly because there are rumours that plague has devastated the city. Lord Raymond dies in a fire, but the plague starts to take hold of the Greek army. It sweeps through the continent killing all those who become infected. England feels safe for a time but cases are reported and soon it is just as virulent on the Island. Adrian is elected Lord Protector after Ryland (a man of the people) flees the infected city of London. The plague abates in the winter months but at the first sign of spring it continues to scythe down the population. A band of survivors group themselves around Adrian and Lionel and decide to head for Switzerland, but they are decimated along the way. Mary Shelley at last gets into her stride taking her novel out of the rut of some second rate romanticism into something that is quite unique for its time. The trek through the continent takes the form of a nightmare journey as all the survivors know that they are battling against insurmountable odds. There are passages of fine writing here as Shelley contrasts the failure of the human race against the backdrop of the natural world which is unaffected by the plague. The novel is written in the first person by Lionel, who we understand may be the only survivor. He must watch helplessly as everyone else dies around him and this is one of the true horrors of this very gothic novel. Shelley's book has been picked over by many critics for what it might or might not say about; government, feminism, class and society and schools of thought, but I would say you may wish to be careful with this as you may not like what you find. The overriding impression that I got was that noble men were born to rule and while women could make a contribution that was as far as it goes. It is man's over riding ambition and lust for power that somehow leads to a force of nature that will cut him down to size. A long and sometimes tiresome read that is just about saved by the final third which takes it up to another level. Three stars.
    • 3/5
      Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man” showed promise near the beginning:“There is no fruition in their vacant kindness, and sharp rocks lurk beneath the smiling ripples of these shallow waters.”And then took nearly two hundred pages to find another passage worth recording:“She described in vivid terms the ceaseless care that with still renewing hunger ate into her soul; she compared this gnawing of sleepless expectation of evil, to the vulture that fed on the heart of Prometheus; under the influence of this eternal excitement, and of the interminable struggles she endured to combat and conceal it, she felt, she said, as if all the wheels and springs of the animal machine worked at double rate, and were fast consuming themselves.”A main character dies in part one only to resurrect immediately from false rumor in the subsequent section—and I didn’t even give a shit. I could not wait to finish this book. Which saddens me since I enjoyed what I’ve read from Shelley, namely: “Frankenstein”, “The Pilgrims” and an assortment of short stories. I understand that it’s a precursor to what would become standard in the SF tradition, that it was a statement about the female voice (her own, really) in literature in her time, that it had incorporated a host of personal tragedies (the deaths of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and two children, as well as their friend, Lord Byron), and that she had felt herself to be “The Last Man”, cut off from intellectual and emotional support and left in a world scarred with its own kind of plague. But, Jesus, did the whole work need to be so boring? For all the effort expended, the experiences and influences that had informed it, I was unprepared for the work to be largely expositional, emotionally detached (or ridiculously hyperbolic, which felt like the same thing, truthfully) and fraught with awkward phrasing. Any glittering poetic moment was quickly strangled in overlong sentences stuffed with information that neither propelled the narrative nor added substance to the imagery. And the last man of the title? Yeah, that doesn’t fucking happen until the final pages. So you go through this whole tedious ordeal only to be left with a man alone in an unfamiliar world trying to reckon his own humanity in the absence of any humankind. Later, Richard Matheson would explore this idea with unrivaled proficiency in “I Am Legend”.Forerunner or not, classic or not, “The Last Man” failed me in so many ways as to be exemplary. I honestly cannot think offhand when I’ve been so absolutely disappointed in a book. Any social statements that the work may have offered were undercut by being too close to the subject, losing objectivity, staring into a maelstrom in which the ship with one’s entire existence in its holds had been lost, only to start the narrative with the painstaking details of each person involved with loading that cargo. The on-board bill of lading would’ve been more interesting. And, truth be told, the author’s introduction, which had almost nothing to do with the book, was the most engaging bit of writing in the whole damn version that I own.“The Last Man-This-Could-Have-Been-So-Much-Better”. Tragedy doesn’t always make for better fiction. I realize that may be sacrilege for some; especially given that this work is deemed a “classic”. And while Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is iconic, painful and blooded with first-hand tragedy, too, it’s a far more riveting story.
    • 2/5
      I'd been looking forward to reading this for a very long time. Now I can honestly say I have read it. Delighted to have done so? Not so much.

      Very, VERY verbose and I couldn't help thinking through much of it, WHY is she going into so much detail over this? I was waiting for the part of the book wherein the focus would be on THE LAST MAN, it didn't happen until the absolute end of the book and in my opinion was fairly anti-climactic. I wasn't expecting big action, and I was not disppointed.

      I think there's a reason why she's best known for Frankenstein. This story is set in 2090s with no thought to what mankind might have achieved by then. There were a couple of mentions of traveling in a balloon which I rather liked, but the chief method of conveyance was still horses and horse drawn carriages. The world hadn't changed at all from the times in which it was written and this caused me to feel let down, but I'd have forgiven it all if there'd been more depth of FEELING from or toward the characters. In my opinion this is a rather cold, dry book.
    • 3/5
      Shelley needed an editor on this puppy. She had one on Frankenstein - Percy Bysshe Shelley - but he added 5,000 words to it, and (I hear) some of the more florid passages. Maybe she thought those worked, so she should write more. (Much of The Last Man is very, very florid indeed.) Or maybe she just figured, with the success of Frankenstein - it was very successful - she could - or must - write more this time. Or maybe she was just getting into character: toward the end of the book, Verney explains that as he was trying to write this last testament, he meant to focus only on the plague but was caught up by reminiscence in his loneliness. That's totally legit; if I was the last man, my last book would be super fucking boring. I would write everything. Shit would be like Infinite Jest.

      It would have an awesome plot, as this does, because being the last man, I automatically get a great story that dudes would read whenever the next apes took to reading. But it would kinda suck, and this book kinda sucks.
    • 5/5
      Notes on THE LAST MAN, by Mary ShelleyJanuary 18, 2013After Shelley’s tale of the manmade monster of FRANKENSTEIN and not long after the death by drowning of her husband, poet Percy Byshe Shelley and her return to England from Italy, she wrote, beginning in 1824, THE LAST MAN. It is a beautifully written and carefully and lovingly crafted story of the end of mankind. There is much I admire here. Shelley has set it in, what for her, was the future: 2072 until 3000. In 1824, Shelley’s work would reflect the fully felt impact of the Industrial Revolution, but her vision of life in the 21st century would still be severely limited by the absence of flight, high tech engineering and the digital age. Although travel by air balloon is possible, life is not all that different from the 19th century. This in no way inhibits the tale, human nature being timeless, and the future age is marked by political change and the end of the monarchy.This is not about what the future will look like, and the world created doesn't bear close scrutiny for realism. What Shelley has done so richly is explore the big questions, what would become important to us if we were to lose the world, society, community, family and friends we've always known until we are left entirely alone in the whole world. At the outset, there already has been a big adjustment and that is the ending of the monarchy in England. A distant war is nothing new, but it is at the site of the war that the plague is born. It spreads gradually across the globe, gaining its power in warmer climes. Eventually it makes its way to England where each summer it rises up again to decimate the populace. The novel is structured in three parts. The first part introduces Lionel Kersey, the son of a charming lover of the high life and hanger-on of royalty. Kersey's father becomes a close friend of the last King of England but eventually loses his standing with the aristocracy when his gambling and spending leave him broke. He has deserted his family and Kersey and his sister, Perdita, grow up orphans after the death of their mother. Kersey grows up a wild sheep herder until the son of the late king, Adrian, returns to Cumbria where Kersey lives. They become friends and Adrian sets about to make up for the late king's abandonment of Kersey's father. He takes Kersey under his wing and introduces him to education and philosophy. Kersey and his sister become gentlefolk.In the second part, there is the greater development of two other important characters, Lord Raymond and Idris. Idris is Adrian's sister. The main development is that of the war between Turkey and Greece out of which comes the devastating Plague. Finally, in part three, the world of humanity falls under the progressive power of the Plague.Throughout, The Last Man paints a descriptive and rich picture of the core nature of human society, its priorities, characteristics, relationship to nature and weaknesses. It is a deeply satisfying example of writing of the Romantic Period with its poetic language, focus on the natural world and examination of all that separates Man from the animal world and binds him to his fellow man.
    • 2/5
      Looking at my review of Shelley's Frankenstein, I noted I had written that the "flowery, melodramatic style sometimes made me roll my eyes." But I also remember by and large enjoying that book, and being impressed by the play of ideas and imagination. Enough I had wanted to read this other book by Shelley, the other one that could also be called science fiction (her other works of fiction mainly being historical fiction.) After all, Mary Shelley is often hailed as the mother of science fiction, or maybe the grandmother, with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as the proud papas. And here is this tale of the end of the world, or of humanity at least due to a pandemic, set centuries after her time (though in our current century.) I thought it suggestive that the great work of Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men, (which I have yet to read, but is considered one of the great and influential science fiction works) had a similar title. Well, this was wretched. I doubt it had much influence on later science fiction or post-apocalyptic works. Apparently the idea of "the last man" or "lastness" had been common in the decades before publication and was nothing new. The Last Man was badly received when published in 1826 and went out of print for more than a century. Sometimes even bad books are worth reading for the influence they've had on culture, literature or history. Unlike the case with Frankenstein, I doubt that's the case here. Intrinsic value? Oh dear God, I don't even know where to begin detailing the problems with this novel and how much I lament that trees died in its name. First, the very first rule of fiction is, "show, don't tell." The tell in this novel is mammoth. You know how you can tell? Flipping through pages you'll see little dialogue. In the midst of reading this I dipped into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) to remind myself that yes, they did already know how to write novels back then and there it was when I glanced down on the page--lively, plausible, complex characterizations, witty dialogue, wise and insightful comments about human nature--well integrated into the narrative--and restrained emotion. Mary Shelley on the other hand has the most emo characters I've ever read--even by the standards of the at times overwrought Frankenstein. I never thought of Brits as a weepy people, not even in the romantic era but Good God. And the exclamation points, the capitalizations, the classical metaphors, the archaic language, the frequent quotation of poetry. Let's have a short sample:In the deepest fountain of my heart the pulses were stirred; around, above, beneath, the clinging Memory as a cloak enwrapt me. In no one moment of coming time did I feel as I had done in time gone by. The spirit of Idris hovered in the air I breathed; her eyes were ever and for ever bent on mine; her remembered smile blinded my faint gaze, and caused me to walk as one, not in eclipse, not in darkness and vacancy--but in a new and brilliant light, too novel, too dazzling for my human senses. On every leaf, on every small division of the universe (as on the hyacinth ac is engraved) was imprinted the talisman of my existence--SHE LIVES! SHE IS!That was chosen from a random page--most of it is... well worse. And though this is set over 250 years in the future, at the end of the 21st century, there is no imaginative speculation about the future on display here. There are balloons for fast travel--an invention from the century before the book was published. And Britain is a republic with an elected Lord Protector. That's it. Otherwise this is a decidedly pre-industrial setting with no discernible social differences from the time the novel was written. Never mind cars or trains, this is a world still connected by horse and sail. It might be said that it was easier for Verne and Wells writing in the midst of the Industrial Revolution to imagine voyages through time and under the sea and into space. Maybe so, but I did expect better from the author of Frankenstein.The book does have one redeeming quality that kept me somewhat interested, especially through the first third. Both the back cover of the book and the introduction reveals this is somewhat a roman-a-clef. Volume 1, the first third of the novel, is basically a domestic drama--no apocalypse in sight--but I did find there the dynamics of the characters interesting in a voyeuristic sense. Mary Shelley wasn't just the author of Frankenstein. She was the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the great English Romantic Poets, and they were close to another of the great English poets--Lord Byron. Supposedly the character of Adrian is based on Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Raymond is a portrait of Lord Byron. (If true-to-life then Bryon was a prime jerk.) If you have the Oxford edition, I don't recommend reading the introduction before the main text, since it gives away the entire plot--but what it did detail of Mary Shelley's life and circle did have some fascinating parallels in the book. The few times I felt moved by the book was when I felt I could read on the page how Mary Shelley must herself have felt like the last human on the earth after the death of so many she had held dear not long before she wrote the novel. The isolation at the end of the novel and hint of hope really is well done. In fact, the last chapter was great--it just came 450 pages too late. So if you're fascinated by these literary figures, you might find (well, some of) this book of interest: otherwise, I'd leave this novel to the academics.
    • 1/5
      I can be more insensitive than normal with this review because Mary Shelley is very dead. This book is terrible enough to make it into the introduction of my first book as the measuring stick by which all stupid works of literature should be judged. Shelley's 19th century novel takes place in the future, but sci-fi hadn't been invented yet, so people are still dying of fashionable things like tuberculosis and broken hearts and unheated horse-drawn wagons. I hope I haven't given too much away--actually, I hope I have. Don't read this book. The only good thing about "The Last Man" is that in Mary Shelley's future, the beautiful country of Greece has a prominent role (and not because of financial blunders).
    • 3/5
      I found this rather a chore to read. Mary Shelley is a great evocative writer. However, the dense opacity of much of the text, its, for the most part, slow pace and, especially, the complete absence of any remotely believable three dimensional characters (they're all handsome and noble heroes and beautiful ladies), were problems for me. Also, from a modern perspective, the portrayal of 2090s society fails totally, as there is no technology (e.g. all long distance travelling is by sailing ship or sailing balloon). The social structure is entirely the same as that of the 1820s except that England is a a republic, though rather a strange one where all significant characters are nobles, including the son of the last deposed king. All this said, the tragic last section, where the surviving population diminishes from 1500 to 80 to 50 to 4 to 3 then finally to Lionel Verney, the Last Man, is hauntingly and movingly described. Reading the Introduction afterwards, which covers the author's motives, helped somewhat with my comprehension of the work.
    • 5/5
      What a fantastic book. Mary Shelley was a genius, and this work rivals her better-known Frankenstein. The setting is a war between the East and the West and between the war and a plague that comes on its heels, only one nobleman survives. He is left to wander the world and ponder the follies of mankind. This character also provides Mary Shelley with a vehicle to examine and critique the Romantic era that she was a part of with her husband, Lord Byron and John Keats. Looking back she has some very interesting thoughts about how dreams tend to go awry even with the best of intentions. Somehow this book just seems to still ring true even now... or maybe more now then ever. A bucket-list novel in my estimation.

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    The Last Man - Mary Shelley

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