Total Pageviews

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

The Last Man, an apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, first published in 1826

  

"The Last Man is an 

 apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel by 

 Mary Shelley, first published in 1826. ;

The narrative concerns Europe in the late 21st century, 

 ravaged by the rise of a bubonic plague pandemic 

 that rapidly sweeps across the entire globe, ultimately resulting in the near-extinction of humanity. 

 It also includes discussion of the British state as a republic, for which Shelley sat in meetings of the House of Commons to gain insight to the governmental system of the Romantic era.  

The novel includes many fictive allusions to her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley,  

who drowned in a shipwreck four years before the book's publication, as well as their close friend Lord Byron, who had died two years previously."  


Introduction


'Mary Shelley states that in 1818 she discovered, in a cave near Naples, prophetic writings painted on leaves by the Cumaean Sibyl. 

 She says she has edited these writings into the narrative of a man living at the end of the 21st century,  

commencing in 2073 and concluding in 2100." 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man   




 "In 2092, while Lionel and Adrian attempt to return their lives to normality, the plague continues to spread across Europe and the Americas.  

The appearance of a black sun causes panic throughout the world, and 

 storm surges flood coastal towns across Europe 

In France, Adrian learns the earlier emigrants have divided into factions, amongst them a fanatical religious sect led by a false messiah who claims his followers will be saved from disease. 

 Ships arrive in Ireland carrying survivors from America, who lawlessly plunder Ireland and Scotland before invading England. 

 Fearing to be the last human left on Earth, Lionel follows the Apennine Mountains to Rome, befriending a sheepdog along the way.  

A year passes without anyone else entering Rome, and Lionel resolves to leave with his dog and live the rest of his life 

 as a wanderer of the depopulated continents of Africa and Asia  

looking for other survivors. The story ends in the year 2100." 

  _____ 



"Mary's mother died 11 days after giving birth to her. 

 She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich informal education,  

encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. " 



Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 

 née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851)  


 was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus 

 (1818),  

which is considered an early example of science fiction. 

She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley.  

Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin  

and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft." 


_____ 


"Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, 

 particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. 

 This view was a direct challenge 

 to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley  

and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin." 


___ 


'On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart." 






No comments: