The Last Man

First published in 1826, ‘The Last Man’ is an apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, an English novelist.
The book tells of a forthcoming world that a plague has destroyed. The novel was harshly examined at the time, and, except for a 1924 silent film based on it, was nearly unknown – having been eclipsed by Shelley's more famous works – until a scholarly revitalization in the 1960s. It includes semi-biographical portraits of Romantic figures in Shelley's circle, particularly Shelley's late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Profound in theme and peopled with characters that own a refreshing exuberance, it is a novel that will breathlessly race you to its stunning, climactic finish.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1797–1851), daughter of political radical William Godwin and feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, grew up among the leading voices of the Romantic movement. She met and wed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. When the Shelleys spent that summer on Lake Geneva with friends—among them, Lord Byron—Byron challenged the writers to a ghost-story contest. Mary Shelley’s sketch inspired her novel Frankenstein (1818), influenced by her loss of her infant daughter in 1815. Four years after Frankenstein’s publication, her husband drowned. The tragedy haunted Shelley for the rest of her life, which she dedicated to annotating her husband’s writing, publishing her own novels, and revising Frankenstein for republication.