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O último homem

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,

Jana P. Bianchi (Goodreads Author) (Translator)

3.35 · Rating details · 4,128 ratings · 563 reviews

O fim nunca esteve tão próximo. O último homem, escrito por Mary Shelley pouco tempo depois da morte do esposo, é um misto de pessimismo, autobiografia e reação a Percy Shelley, cujos ideais românticos não são capazes de salvar os protagonistas do derradeiro fim. Quase duzentos anos após a publicação original, o livro que chocou os críticos do século XIX está mais atual do ...more

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ebook, 712 pages

Published November 13th 2020 by Plutão Livros (first published 1826)

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Oct 18, 2016 Sean Barrs rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: romantic-movement, classics, 5-star-reads, shelley-s

Revisiting this during a global pandemic seems rather unnerving because this is a book in which the entirety of humanity dies after succumbing to plague.

And the more I read it the more I take from it. This is my third time round. The first was for enjoyment and the second two were for research purposes. I'm currently writing a PhD chapter on this along with Frankenstein and Matilda.

What draws me to this literary era, beyond that of any other, are the depictions of nature. The natural world is ...more

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May 20, 2009 J.G. Keely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, uk-and-ireland, science-fiction, reviewed, plague

I don't really like reading, which must strain credulity, since I devote so much of my time and energy to doing it. But reading, for me, is never an easy thing. Only rarely do I get caught up and find myself turning pages heedlessly, plunging into the text. More often, I am well aware of what page I'm on and how many pages until this chapter ends.

The reading itself is slow and ponderous, winding a sinuous path through the book, and this leisurely pace always sets my mind to wandering, looking fo I don't really like reading, which must strain credulity, since I devote so much of my time and energy to doing it. But reading, for me, is never an easy thing. Only rarely do I get caught up and find myself turning pages heedlessly, plunging into the text. More often, I am well aware of what page I'm on and how many pages until this chapter ends.

The reading itself is slow and ponderous, winding a sinuous path through the book, and this leisurely pace always sets my mind to wandering, looking for clues and foreshadowing, word use, structure, ideas, half-ideas, and flashes of brilliance. All of my friends read more quickly than I do, and many have described their experience as being totally divorced from the text: that once they get into the book, they grow unaware of the process of reading.

And yet I am the one who writes the reviews, whose mind whirls and reels with layered meanings and critical analysis. So I keep reading, though it is can be a chore, as my brain must always perk up and churn along, processing and considering.

Many a time, I've wished I had my friends' eyes, and could knock out a book in an afternoon, could simply read as if I were watching TV--then I could afford the luxury of rereading. I can read more quickly than is my habit: in college, I often forced myself to do so, to make due dates. Yet it was always unpleasant, rushing through without a moment free for thought, so that by the time I came out, I had only half the ideas and observations I would normally glean from a good book.

I was tempted to rush with The Last Man, not because it was dull or poorly written--which often tempts me to rush through worse books, knowing I won't miss much--but because it is thick and long, and may be even more ponderous than I am. This book was a haul, moreso than any other in my recent memory, it took time and energy to get through the long chapters, poetic language, and asides.

Yet it was not poorly-written, the poetry of its language was not misplaced, nor was its pacing some accident of language; it's a good book. It was merely a great deal of book to get through.

Like many Victorian authors, Shelley felt no need to rush the plot along, nor to curtail her flood of words. Luckily, she backed them up with ideas and feelings, so it was not merely the empty deluge of words so common in many American novels of the same period.

There were some problems with the book's structure, most notably that Shelley often passed over moments of action or character growth with a short summary, but almost never curtailed her descriptions of places or emotional states. But this gives the book a very introspective bent, which complements the protagonist's isolation as he attempts to come to terms with the world as it collapses around him.

The book is thematically intriguing, especially to someone who has an interest and a familiarity with the ideals, philosophies, and art of the Victorian period. Much of the book is a deconstruction of Romanticism, showing how an aesthete's optimism never long survives contact with the real world. This wasn't a problem for Shelley's compatriots, as they had the money and influence to avoid the more difficult aspects of reality, but after they all died young, only Mary was left, a lone woman in a changing world, writing a book about the death of the grand Romantic ideal.

The 'Last Man' from which she takes her title was not an original idea of Shelley's, either, but a Victorian notion that had been explored by many previous authors. It was Shelley's intention to create a whole story around the concept, presenting the fall of that last man with the image of the death of the Victorian ideal itself in the face of overwhelming democratic industrialization of ever aspect of modern life, including art.

For Shelley, man was not a uniform mass: there were remarkable men, and there were unremarkable men. This distinction has been widely condemned in modern democratic states, where Payne's notion that men should be treated equally was mistaken for the idea that men actually are equal. But Mary cuts us to the quick, reminding us that great men (and particularly great artists) can do little to stem the tide of the mob, or of industry.

It is a strikingly postmodern message, prefiguring Nietzsche and the American postwar authors. It is a message that Shelley's refined peers were not prepared to hear, so they attacked the book, and the author herself, calling her 'perverse' and 'ugly'. She presented a perverse and ugly world, a naturalistic world, which she had come to know through hardship, and which her peers failed to see looming on the horizon.

For them, Keats' ultimate line "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" held few notes of irony, but for Shelley, they were already the words of a dead compatriot, whose beautiful ideas served mainly to ennoble his tragedy.

Shelley's book was reviled, and her career stagnated--despite all the promise of 'Frankenstein', 'The Last Man' would fall out of print for more than a century, and its prescient foreshadowing our modern obsessions with death, isolation, and other such eschatonic concerns went long unnoticed. Now, the story she told seems familiar and reasonable, and even somewhat idealistic in the throes of slow degradation, though it stands up beside the works of Eliot and Beckett as an unrelenting vision of doom.

What Shelley came to recognize, which none of her critics mentioned, was that the death of mankind is not merely marked by our spilled blood and lifeless bodies, but by the fall of art, of idealism, of love and joy, and all the heights that we have reached, or hoped to reach. The death of man is a tragedy only inasmuch as it cuts off our possibility, our future, our promise; though if we lived forever, we still might never reach it, there remains always, hope. ...more

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Aug 28, 2015 Henry Avila rated it liked it · review of another edition

You are the last person on the face of the Earth every desire can be easily obtained, the best of the best shelter, food , clothes, toys, transportation an endless vacation go anywhere do anything , nobody can stop it the enormous world is all yours...Only one little problem the animals have inherited the planet, a lonely, solitary man no humans to speak to, he is just temporarily standing for a short while and will soon be gone too ( and welcomes this fact), civilization has collapsed buried un You are the last person on the face of the Earth every desire can be easily obtained, the best of the best shelter, food , clothes, toys, transportation an endless vacation go anywhere do anything , nobody can stop it the enormous world is all yours...Only one little problem the animals have inherited the planet, a lonely, solitary man no humans to speak to, he is just temporarily standing for a short while and will soon be gone too ( and welcomes this fact), civilization has collapsed buried under the rubble of its greed to the delight of his fellow creatures the horses and cows and others, they are now at the top nobody is left to mourn, the plague has destroyed a few thousand years... an experiment that never quite succeeded... England in the far future well not so far anymore, the time the late 21st century the king has abdicated the country becomes a republic but the royals still retain their precious titles, the Earl of Windsor Adrian (modeled after Percy Shelley) the son of the last monarch , he strangely supports the new democratic government to the great annoyance of his haughty mother, the former Queen now a widow, she wants the return of her privileges. Lord Raymond (Lord Byron) is ambitious, he desires to be king someday yet will settle now for being Lord Protector of the nation, to rule and make England great again, in the north of the country in hilly Cumberland a shepherd boy, Lionel Verney (loosely Mary Shelley) takes care of a farmer's sheep , his irresponsible still amusing father, was a close friend of the late king until gambling away his money which the generous monarch, had given him to start a business. Running from his unforgivable embarrassment, marries a local peasant girl, both died young leaving Lionel and younger sister Perdita orphans, to work at a very tender age to survive. Verney the angry young man becomes a petty criminal leading a gang of youths, fellow shepherds in minor destruction and killing animals in a park, which belongs to the new Earl of Windsor and ends up in jail for a day or two. When finally Adrian visits his mansion and property after a couple of heated incidents, Lionel who blames Adrian the son of his father's former friend, for his and Perdita troubles, becomes huge pals too and hears about Idris, the Earl's pretty sister. His life is transformed from the bottom in lowly abject poverty to the highest levels in society, schooling a job as a secretary to a diplomat in Vienna , coming back to his native land meeting every important person there, elected to parliament. Bringing him up the ladder , his sister and closest confident Perdita also. Lord Raymond is smitten by her, drops his intended the Greek Princess Evadne ( who Adrian loves) he marries the untitled but lovely Perdita to the surprise of everyone, the ruler of the nation has as a bride a commoner. Somethings never change in the future, Greeks are still fighting Turks technology has stalled , though the fastest transport is hot air balloons and another mysterious illness appears in a distant corner of the Earth killing many people and life continues but for how long? The first end of the world novel 1826, may seem a little primitive by today's standards, than again the public who vicariously read this in the past never thought it might become fact. ...more

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Jun 16, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Hard line fans of Mary Shelley & gluttons for early science fiction

Shelves: british-isles, novel, 19th-century

Mary Shelley did not stop writing after Frankenstein and I was excited to come across her last novel "The Last Man", unfortunately I found it a difficult book to read and I came close to giving up on it all together. Indeed the first time I read it, I took a break of over a year in the middle of the book - it was not exactly compelling, read through the night material.

The idea is that a plague wipes out humanity leaving one man alone to survive. This story is set in the future, Shelley's vision Mary Shelley did not stop writing after Frankenstein and I was excited to come across her last novel "The Last Man", unfortunately I found it a difficult book to read and I came close to giving up on it all together. Indeed the first time I read it, I took a break of over a year in the middle of the book - it was not exactly compelling, read through the night material.

The idea is that a plague wipes out humanity leaving one man alone to survive. This story is set in the future, Shelley's vision of which includes airships as an important means of transport.

For added interest she revisits and re-imagines the interrelationships of herself (view spoiler), her husband P.B Shelley, and Byron, adding in their political interests in Greek independence and constitutional change in Britain as elements in the plot - all of which sounded promising. Here was early science fiction, written by a woman and rich in the ideals of the Romantic poets.

The problem however was in the execution.

The constitutional deposition of the King doesn't make waves in future Britain, the character based on Byron (inevitably a leading figure in the powerful House of Lords) makes unconvincing speeches before going on to defeat the Ottoman Empire (though admittedly with some help from a few Greeks, so it's not as the book is pure wish fulfilment), luckily the plague then intervenes and starts to kill people off.

Unfortunately this takes a long time time while the titular last man travels about in Europe with bands of people, who growing fewer and fewer in number as the plague bites, until eventually everybody else is dead bar our eponymous hero (view spoiler). Then the book continues for a while with the last man wondering about feeling lonely.

No doubt Mary Shelley also felt lonely after the deaths of the people who had played such a major part in her own early life, but the eventual effect in the novel was tedious, and from a biographical point of view one can feel that she saw herself as the last man standing from her group of early friends, as indeed she was. I did not feel engaged with the sentimental death scenes of characters that I hadn't spent much time with, or who don't feel as though they are more than pencil sketches of people from her past. Overall I found this a book more interesting to have read, than to read. ...more

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Nov 13, 2020 Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: european-literature, mystery-horror, classics, dystopia, 19th-century, britain, british-literature, gothic-fiction, european-heritage

‘’A solitary being is by instinct a wanderer, and that I would become. A hope of amelioration always attends on change of place, which would even lighten the burthen of my life... Tiber, the road which is spread by nature’s own hand, threading her continent, was at my feet, and many a boat was tethered to the banks. I would with a few books, provisions and my dog embark in one of these and float down the current of the stream into the sea; and then, keeping near land. I would coast the beaute ...more

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Feb 27, 2019 7jane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

(NOTE: Oxford Classics' introduction-part can be spoilery.)
Mary Shelley wrote more than Frankenstein (still need to read that one). This book was written 8 years after that book, after returning from Italy back to England, and after losing her husband to death. This and the loss of most of her children with him no doubt inspired the mood and the losses happening in this book, a book about gradual dwindling of people on earth due to a plague (which started in Egypt, then spread eastwards and west ...more

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May 18, 2011 Andrew Breslin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I desperately tried to convince myself that I didn’t loathe this, but I’m just not that good a liar.

Frankenstein, arguably my favorite book of all time, is so staggeringly good that I physically tremble when I read it, and I have read it over and over. So yes, I went into this with high expectations. I did not expect it to be as good as Frankenstein. I did expect it to be marginally more entertaining than reading a telephone book, but I was disappointed.

Granted: there are beautifully written pa I desperately tried to convince myself that I didn’t loathe this, but I’m just not that good a liar.

Frankenstein, arguably my favorite book of all time, is so staggeringly good that I physically tremble when I read it, and I have read it over and over. So yes, I went into this with high expectations. I did not expect it to be as good as Frankenstein. I did expect it to be marginally more entertaining than reading a telephone book, but I was disappointed.

Granted: there are beautifully written passages. Prose and poetry weave together in a seamless lyrical ballet, and it is nothing less than sublimely elegant. But there’s a reason I read Mary Shelley and not Percy Shelley. Because I am interested in fiction, not in poetry. There is a story buried underneath hundreds of pages of scintillating, mellifluous verse. But it moves at the approximate pace that continents drift.

There are actual poetic passages all through the novel, just sprinkled in liberally right in the middle of chapters, where they might have proven highly distracting, if there were some sort of story being told, which, fortunately, did not present a problem. These are quoted from famous poets, all from sometime before the early 19th century, of course. Which immediately implies that not a single poet worth quoting arises throughout the rest of the 19th, the 20th and the 21st centuries. (A sentiment with which I might be inclined to agree, but then again, I’m not a big fan of poetry that does not involve Nantucket.)

Last summer I was part of a panel discussion of the five essential science fiction authors. Mary Shelley topped my list, because I feel that she essentially invented the genre, half a century before Wells and Verne. She was the first writer to take the cutting edge science of her own day, and envision the philosophical implications of a rational extrapolation of existing technology. It was such an impressive leap of imagination that right now, as I’m typing this review, I just want to reread Frankenstein yet again.

It is not accurate to say that the picture Shelley paints of the late 21st century includes no allusions whatsoever to technological advances. There were two. In the first, she describes 21st century air travel, which consists of very fast balloons. Fair enough. In the second, she makes a brief, vague reference to improved methods in agricultural and industrial production. But that’s it. She foresaw artificial intelligence but not light-bulbs? Cars? Recording sound? Some means by which people communicate at a distance? Was that really so hard to imagine, Mary? You wrote Frankenstein!

Her time was slightly before that of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, and so she couldn’t have been expected to know much about the germ theory of disease. But while the world slowly succumbed to a deadly plague of unprecedented virulence, none of the characters, essentially the leaders of the free world, the Lord Protector of the most powerful nation on Earth and his inner circle, none of them think for a moment “let’s get some scientists to look into this!” No, the Lord Protector’s actions in this moment of crisis are essentially limited to ensuring that the theaters remain open to keep the nation’s spirits up.

Isaac Asimov (my other favorite science fiction writer) once noted that when science fiction writers had grown bored with exploring speculative developments in technology, they would turn (as he did) to social science fiction, centered not on gadgets and gizmos, but instead toward an examination of the progression of societies themselves. Shelley does this, to a degree, but the depth of her vision is disappointingly myopic. She doesn’t predict grand sweeping changes in society over the course of 300 years. Instead, she is so bold to suggest that by the end of the 21st century, England might relinquish hereditary monarchs in favor of a small group of privileged elitist nobles electing the same guy who would have inherited the throne. For the daughter of two of the most radical political philosophers of her day, I expected a slightly more dramatic prognostication of political upheaval.

None of this is going to diminish the high opinion I have of Mary Shelley. I remain steadfast in ranking her as one of the most influential novelists ever. And even while I was bored to tears and crushed with disappointment as I trudged through this elegantly dreary, beautifully dull tome, I still took note of how majestically all her words were put together as they went absolutely nowhere. I only wished that she would not have tried so hard to emulate her husband and his poems, all of which together could not hold a candle to her first novel. I wish she would have stuck with crafting imaginative stories in which visionary ideas are examined, raising deep philosophical questions, while simultaneously keeping the reader on the edge of his seat. Percy had far too great an impact on her if you ask me, and Mary would have done well to seek out some different literary influences. I wish she would have read Frankenstein. ...more

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Mar 11, 2013 David Sarkies rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Science-Fiction Lovers

Recommended to David by: Wikipedia

Shelves: sci-fi

Shelley's apocalypse
13 December 2013

Being a lover of older books and science-fiction when I discover a book that is in effect both I become really interested, so when I discovered that Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame) wrote a book about the last man left alive on Earth (or as she puts it in her book the LAST MAN), I was immediately interested, so instead of attempting to troll through the chain store bookstores here in Australia (which generally consists of Dymoks, now that Borders has effec Shelley's apocalypse
13 December 2013

Being a lover of older books and science-fiction when I discover a book that is in effect both I become really interested, so when I discovered that Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame) wrote a book about the last man left alive on Earth (or as she puts it in her book the LAST MAN), I was immediately interested, so instead of attempting to troll through the chain store bookstores here in Australia (which generally consists of Dymoks, now that Borders has effectively gone, and all of the other bookshops simply sell rubbish that you read once and then toss – not that I am in favour of book burning, but these books are the types of books that simply take up space on an overcrowded bookshelf) I jumped onto Amazon and ordered it (along with a bunch of other stuff, but now that the Australian government is doing is damndest to undermine the strength of the Australian dollar, that is going to be an unlikely event in the future).

Anyway, when I started reading this book I found that it was pretty slow going, and because I did not want to waste my overseas holiday earlier this year reading a boring and dull book, I put it away to go back to it again later. Granted, this book does start off really slow, but when you hit part two it really begins to pick up.

The book is set three hundred years in the future (at least from Shelley's perspective, though it is only a hundred years from ours) though the thing that I noticed was that technology had not effectively advanced that much. While Shelley did not have much to work from with regards to speculative science-fiction (this only started to occur with Verne and Wells) one would have expected that there was a suggestion that people were not running around in horses and carriages. However, as I have suggested, the concept of speculative science-fiction was still at least fifty years off, so one cannot blame Shelley for not creating a more futuristic like world (and in any case, it was not her intention to write a speculative piece). However, the story begins with a political crisis in England (actually it begins with the narrator being found wondering around as a man beast and being brought back to civilisation) where there is a push for the abdication of the king and a movement to a parliamentary democracy. This occurs at the end of book one, and book two begins with the former king and the narrator going on a European holiday and ending up in Greece.

This is interesting because at the time of writing the Greeks had just won the a war of independence (with a lot of help from the likes of Lord Bryon and the British) but there was still a large Turkish influence in the land. The story fast forwards to the future where the protagonists join the ongoing struggle where the Turks have been completely removed from Greece and they are laying siege to Istanbul, and this is where things begin to pick up, because while the Turks are pretty much defeated, out of the ashes of Istanbul comes this disease which spreads out from the ruins of this great city to begin to envelope the world. The rest of the book has the protagonist watch as the disease begins to decimate the civilised world and as one by one everybody close to him begins to die eventually leaving him left as the LAST MAN left on Earth.

The Last Man is a somewhat dark, yet poetic, book, and Shelley does drop in numerous lines from poets throughout the ages (something that is generally not done anymore, but then again the writers back then wrote for the sake or writing rather than writing simply for money – Shelley did not really have a need for money). If you look at the Wikipedia page on this book you will see that the main characters all relate to people that Shelley knows, and it is suggested (quite strongly in fact) that the book is written after all of her friends had died effectively leaving her alone in the world.

Loneliness is a funny thing because you can be surrounded by people yet feel utterly alone, and this is the feeling I get from Shelley, being the last of her peer group to survive (and since she was a woman, and back in those days women were not supposed to write because that was a male domain, it must have been very lonely for her). I guess this is one of the curses of old age in that as we watch the people that we know and have known for a while begin to die we lose part of ourself because at that age, while we can still make new friends, the thing that a new friend does not have is the time spent with our old friends, the influence that we have had on each other, and the connections that a lifetime of friendship has created. I know that I have friends which simply cannot be replicated by a new person because that past simply does not exist. This is much more truer when it comes to family because, once again, there is an aspect of the relationship that simply cannot be replicated. Every relationship is different, in fact every relationship is unique because there are things and events that cannot be replicated (for instance if you go to the 2010 Stereosonic Music Festival with a friend, no other friend is going to have the same experience, and the same relationship, that you had with this friend at the 2010 Stereosonic Music Festival).

The last thing I wish to note is that as I read this book I felt that there was a lot of Day of the Triffids here. Obviously Shelley did not base her book on that book (since it was written about 150 years after) but I suspect that John Wyndham had been influenced somewhat by Shelley. Shelley is pretty much famous for Frankenstein, however it is clear that she wrote much more than just that one book. While we may consider Jules Verne to be the father of Science-fiction, we can go further back and consider Shelley to be its mother (though this is not the first apocalyptic story written, because St John wrote one 1800 years earlier called the Book of Revelation). ...more

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Nov 18, 2017 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 3classics, 1audio, apocalyptic, 2fiction

That was long! Good in places, boring in others, it wasn't really what I expected. From the author of Frankenstein: The 1818 Text & set in the end of the 21st century, I expected some SF elements, but there were none. The war is one that could have taken place any time in the prior centuries & was taking place then. While there is some travel by balloon, most is by horse. Ships still rely on sails save for a few steam powered ones. Being published in 1826, there is no knowledge of germ theory so ...more

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Nov 21, 2014 Althea Ann rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I'm glad I read this book.
As a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, I felt like it was a must. Shelley didn't originate the concepts found here, but this is still arguably, the first actual post-apocalyptic novel, as such.

It was quite fascinating to see how many of the common tropes we find in so much of today's post-apocalyptic fiction are also found in this book: the urge to travel, even in the absence of a clear goal. Scavenging and exploring abandoned places. Hordes of those willing to victi ...more

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Oct 20, 2018 BrokenTune rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "One word, in truth, had alarmed her more than battles or sieges, during which she trusted Raymond’s high command would exempt him from danger. That word, as yet it was not more to her, was PLAGUE. This enemy to the human race had begun early in June to raise its serpent-head on the shores of the Nile; parts of Asia, not usually subject to this evil, were infected. It was in Constantinople; but as each year that city experienced a like visitation, small attention was paid to those accounts which ...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Christopher Conlon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Every once in a while in my reading life I’ve come across a book that has taken me completely by surprise—one that forces me to inhale deeply at the end and then, exhaling, utter an overwhelmed “Wow.”

“The Last Man” is such a book for me.

Despite my love of Mary Shelley’s great “Frankenstein,” I went into “The Last Man” without much hope, based on its relative obscurity as well as some of the slams it has received right here on Goodreads. Yet I was awed by the power of this story. It’s true that i Every once in a while in my reading life I’ve come across a book that has taken me completely by surprise—one that forces me to inhale deeply at the end and then, exhaling, utter an overwhelmed “Wow.”

“The Last Man” is such a book for me.

Despite my love of Mary Shelley’s great “Frankenstein,” I went into “The Last Man” without much hope, based on its relative obscurity as well as some of the slams it has received right here on Goodreads. Yet I was awed by the power of this story. It’s true that if today’s readers go into it expecting, say, “I Am Legend” or “The Stand,” they’re going to be disappointed (just as readers expecting the fast pacing and graphic violence of contemporary horror novels are invariably disappointed by “Frankenstein”). “The Last Man,” set in the late 21st century, is a long novel, and in some ways it’s unfair to characterize it simply as “apocalyptic,” though it is certainly that. Shelley spends the entire first volume of this 1826 triple decker on developing her characters: the narrator, Lionel Verney; his sister, Perdita; Adrian, the Earl of Windsor, who rejects the machinations of his mother in trying to secure for him the British throne; and Raymond, who eventually becomes Lord Protector of England in its new, republican form of government. Readers complain about this first part of the novel, but for anyone accustomed to the fiction of the period, it all reads just fine; my interest held firmly throughout the entirety of the first volume, even though the coming plague is never mentioned.

In Part 2, events grow darker. The plague begins to receive glancing, foreboding references, and by the halfway point, the devastation has reached England. Suffice it to say that things go downhill from there.

Part 3, the section that even people who dislike the novel as a whole are willing to praise, is indeed magnificent, as the human race begins to die out. Any number of indelible images arise in this section, and the final pages of the novel are both unbearably sad and unforgettably beautiful—writing as powerful as the hallucinatory final chapters of “Frankenstein.”

Does the novel have flaws? Yes. Some of the characters (not all, as a few reviewers claim) are flat, the dialogue is often impossibly literary, and there are occasional jumps of logic or credibility in the development of the plot. (All of these problems, it should be pointed out, are also present in “Frankenstein.”) Yet, at least for me, they detract little from the sweeping grandeur and tragic power of “The Last Man.” To think that this book was published in 1826 is simply mind-boggling, and perhaps its failure at the time shouldn’t be a surprise. (It received extremely harsh reviews, one critic referring to the author’s “diseased imagination”; despite this, it remained one of Shelley’s favorites among her own works). “The Last Man” quickly fell out of print, and would not be rediscovered until the Cold War era of the 1960s, when no one could any longer dismiss as “diseased” its horrifying images of the end of humanity.

“The Last Man” is an astonishing novel, one that deserves to be far better known than it is. ...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Adam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1800-s, prose

A profoundly sad reaction to Romanticism, initially vilified, mocked, and essentially blacklisted, before being recovered and championed in the 1960s.

It's overlong, the language is annoyingly exalted, most of the characters are flat, and there's a lot of rubbish. Sounds tedious? It sort of is. This is definitely one of the few examples I've encountered of an excellent literary work that for much of its padded length feels somewhat interminable, but that emerges as a remarkable, deeply interesti ...more

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Feb 26, 2020 T.D. Whittle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, favourites-fiction, favourites-classics, percy-mary-shelley

Gorgeous. I liked this one even more than Frankenstein, which is one of my favourite books. It's strange that this book is so often referred to as science fiction. The only scifi aspect is that it takes place in the future—fortunately for us because, as the title portends, the human species is wiped out at the end of the twenty-first century when a plague devastates our planet.

The Last Man was published in 1856 and it reads as if it is taking place in 1800s. That gets a bit confusing at times, Gorgeous. I liked this one even more than Frankenstein, which is one of my favourite books. It's strange that this book is so often referred to as science fiction. The only scifi aspect is that it takes place in the future—fortunately for us because, as the title portends, the human species is wiped out at the end of the twenty-first century when a plague devastates our planet.

The Last Man was published in 1856 and it reads as if it is taking place in 1800s. That gets a bit confusing at times, when we are suddenly reminded that it's supposed to be the end of the twenty-first century. Well, there is a brief flight in a hot-air balloon, which was still a new form of human transport when Shelley wrote The Last Man, but nothing else in the novel is especially modern or reflects how things have changed since the nineteenth century. There are no cars, planes, or even steamships. No electricity, radios, televisions, computers, internet, or modern medicine. Shelley did not have a Wellsian vision for her book; in fact, it's not even as modern as Frankenstein. I am not entirely sure, therefore, why she chose to set her book in the late twenty-first century; there's no attempt to introduce a futuristic setting or props or to speculate on what might change in the forthcoming two centuries from when she was writing. Nevertheless, that's a minor point because guess what doesn't change? Us. She knew that because she was a genius.

What I love about this book is that it is philosophical, poetic, and deeply tender. It's a Gothic romance on a grand scale. Shelley allows her main character, Lionel Verney, to tell his story slowly and beautifully, staying focused on the thoughts and feelings he experiences as humanity faces its extinction. Normally, I don't like dystopian fiction; but MWS, just like her husband, was a devoted humanist. She had a tragic life herself and both her love and loss shine through—talk about making the most of your misfortunes. Even in the worst of all possible events, she gives Lionel some little hope to cling to, some small reason to carry on. She believes, ultimately, that love and virtue are possible in the human spirit, and worth fighting for even if we fail.

I suppose what I also love is that I adore the Shelleys and they are here, written into this fiction. So much of their own life story is present in the deep love, the sorrows, the high ideals, and even the loss of their own children, and Percy's drowning in Italy. It's very obvious that Lionel is based on Mary Shelley herself, Adrian (Lionel's best friend) on Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Raymond (another great friend and hero of the Greeks) on Lord Byron. I won't go into details about that but if you've read any of their biographies, you will see this right away.

Once I got to the last third of The Last Man, I found I could not put it down, so continued reading all night. I highly recommend, but not if you have no taste for Gothic literature written with a poetic turn, and books that unwind slowly but with great care. ...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Sheila rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalyptic-or-dystopian, book-club, kindle, classics

Oh Mary Shelley, really...is this the best you could do? Honestly, it should probably get a 1-star because I had to force myself to finish it. I continued with this torture because was hoping you would redeem yourself and make this book become at least remotely interesting in the end. But you didn't. You failed.

This is a novel of "the last man", who becomes the only survivor of a future plague. The story actually starts with an introduction by you, Mary Shelley, stating that you found a collect Oh Mary Shelley, really...is this the best you could do? Honestly, it should probably get a 1-star because I had to force myself to finish it. I continued with this torture because was hoping you would redeem yourself and make this book become at least remotely interesting in the end. But you didn't. You failed.

This is a novel of "the last man", who becomes the only survivor of a future plague. The story actually starts with an introduction by you, Mary Shelley, stating that you found a collection of "prophetic" writings in the cave of the Sybil in Naples in 1818, and the story that follows in based on these writings. So, I was with you to this point, Mary. I thought, "Interesting idea! I can go with this." But then your story starts.

The main thing I have to say about your story is...BORING! Really, Mary, it is incredibly, horribly, boring. You get stuck in a vicious cycle of trying to write poetic, wordsy descriptions for every event, person, or scene, and it all just turns into mindless babble that goes nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. In fact, nothing really happens in this story until two-thirds of the way in!

Also, Mary, do you really have no creative ideas at all for what life might be like in the year 2100, the year this story is set? I know you lived in the 1800's, Mary, but really, could you not at least TRY to imagine a life 300 years in the future that did not involve only horseback riding, and sailing on boats? There is NO technology in this book. None. You failed here, Mary. You needed to use your imagination. Try to think of some advances that might take place in the future. Anything. You were not expected to get it right, you were just expected to try. But as you wrote it, these characters are living identically to how you lived in the 1800's. You get an F for creative thinking, Mary.

So, all in all, you basically failed. And I see on Wikipedia that you later spoke of The Last Man as being one of your favourite works. Really, Mary? You think this was great writing? I should give you a 1-star just for that opinion you have of yourself, but since I am trying to be fair, I will give you a 2-star, but will call it a D-. You really could have done so much better, and I am very disappointed in you on this one. ...more

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Feb 29, 2008 Nicole Hogan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: absolute-must-re-read

Oh, The Last Man! One of the (many)books perpetually on my re-read list.

This later work from Shelly shows her talent as a mature innovative writer and secures a literary legacy outside of her husband's shadow. Written four years after Percy's death and some ten years after the publication of Frankenstein, Shelly weaves a fantastic version of the end of the world in the year 2100. Told from the perspective of the only survivor of a devastating plague that snuffs out humanity, the story subtly inc ...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: review, fiction

Review from Badelynge
It 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. ...more

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Apr 03, 2017 Nathan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: x04-april-2017

I thought this was a fairly difficult read and not one everyone would enjoy, but I really liked it. Basically, if you like early 19th century British novels AND post-apocalyptic fiction, you should check this out.

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Apr 22, 2020 Oleksandr Zholud rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is one of the earliest examples of apoc/post-apoc SF from the author of . I read is as a part of monthly reading for April 2020 at The Evolution of Science Fiction group.

This long novel is a mix of a Victorian/romantic novel, disguised autobiography and proto-SF. The author assumedly finds the manuscript in the Sibyl's cave near Naples and translates it into English. The book has three volumes, each roughly a third of the story.

The first volume presents our narrator and protagonist, Lionel This is one of the earliest examples of apoc/post-apoc SF from the author of . I read is as a part of monthly reading for April 2020 at The Evolution of Science Fiction group.

This long novel is a mix of a Victorian/romantic novel, disguised autobiography and proto-SF. The author assumedly finds the manuscript in the Sibyl's cave near Naples and translates it into English. The book has three volumes, each roughly a third of the story.

The first volume presents our narrator and protagonist, Lionel Verney. His father was a close friend of the king of England, but had a vice of gambling, so to honor his debts he runs to the country, where he begets two children, Lionel and his sister Perdita and dies. Soon their mother perishes as well and orphans have to enter the big world. Initially, Lionel is enraged by supposed treason of the king, who hasn’t helped his father and even attempts to have revenge on King’s son Adrian. Adrian is actually a merciful and wise boy, who turns the enmity to fierce friendship. Meanwhile on a political stage the king abdicated, his wife, Countess of Windsor and Austrian (here I see a clear dislike to “those un-British foreigners who come by marriage to our throne”) wants her son or daughter to have the throne back, and schemes with an ambitious Lord Raymond, hero of Greek war against the Ottomans. While Raymond is extremely ambitious, his love to the protagonist’s sister overcomes his desire to become a king. Raymond marries Perdita, Lionel marries king’s daughter Idris and this knits their fortunes in a single Gordian knot.

While Raymond abandoned his dreams of the crown, he becomes first Lord Protector, and later, after a (described with a lot of innuendo) infidelity with his early lover, Greek princess Evadne, Raymond drops all to go to Greece to become a modern day Alexander of Macedonia.

The second volume describes the Greek campaign and while Raymond is victorious, he losses Evadne and dies. His wife, Perdita is unable to live with that grief and kills herself. And the same time there are the rumors of the great plague. Here we finally get the year of the story, which is 2092 A.D. The plague spreads across Europe and the Americas, there are reports of a black sun, meteorites and great storms. At first England is thought to be safe, but soon the plague reaches even there.

The final volume describes the slowly dwindling group of people trying to survive the plague. Here we get usual tropes of post-apoc: crazy death cults and cruel raiders.

It is important to note that the story was written prior to the theory of microorganisms, so it is a bad wind and miasma that transfer the illness, and fresh winter air stops it.

The book is important predecessor f the genre but is rather slow for majority of modern readers. So, it is more interesting as a historic document for the aficionados of the genre than the general public.
...more

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Jan 09, 2015 Vanessa J. rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, prosegasm, all-the-feels, 2015, ate-my-heart, philosophical, gothic, post-apocalyptic

The Last Man is, as its name says, the story of the last man (Lionel Verney) living on the surface of Earth. During the course of his story, a deadly plague that killed most of mankind started to spread. He told everything he witnessed since his childhood till his experiences in the plague.

The book starts really slow. As I said, this is about Lionel's life, so he tells his story from the beginning. The plague we are promised does not appear until half the book. Based solely on the first half of The Last Man is, as its name says, the story of the last man (Lionel Verney) living on the surface of Earth. During the course of his story, a deadly plague that killed most of mankind started to spread. He told everything he witnessed since his childhood till his experiences in the plague.

The book starts really slow. As I said, this is about Lionel's life, so he tells his story from the beginning. The plague we are promised does not appear until half the book. Based solely on the first half of the book, I would have rated it 2 stars, because that part was a bit boring. The second half, however, deserved 5 stars.

As you might expect, the feeling I was left with was sadness. I mean, it's the story of the last man on Earth. You surely cannot wait unicorns and rainbows everywhere. I am not spoiling the book to you if I say that every beloved one he had would die at some point in the book. To tell you the truth, when those deaths happened, I was not grieved by them alone because I never felt connected to the characters. I was grieved by those deaths because just picturing myself in Lionel's place made me feel sad.

I love being alone. If I could, I would be perfectly happy living alone in the moon without anyone else's company, but I kid you not when I say that if I'm forced to be alone,—if the people are ripped from me—that feeling of happiness would no longer be there. In a world consumed by a deadly plague that almost no one survives, would you be happy being alone? Would you be happy watching all your loved ones die while you go on until there's no one else? Would you be happy if you knew you're the last human?

"To none could I ever relate the story of my adversity; no hope had I."

The writing was one of the things that made my rating get a little higher. As in Frankenstein, it is dark, depressing and poetical. Perhaps beautiful writing was Shelley's best attribute. If the story was not what kept me reading because it was dull at times, it was the writing. I think I've said in other reviews that an amazing writing can sometimes be the only reason why I finish a book. This was not the case, don't worry. I just said it to highlight the point that the writing is marvelous.

Something that really impressed me in the book was how realistic it felt. It's set in late 21st century, and the culture might not be what was realistic, because it was that of the time in which it was written. What felt so realistic were the other aspects: Social, political and economical consequences of the plague. This realism also made me rate this book better.

Finally, it was totally worth reading this book. Sure, it was slow at first, but then it picked up and I enjoyed it immensely after I had read 60% of it. I recommend this book to you, but take into account all the things I've said, otherwise, you might not enjoy it. And please, if you read it, don't compare it to Frankenstein.

"Thus around the shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney—the LAST MAN."

...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Michele rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia-apocalypse

Patience will be rewarded. Unlike, say, The Stand which opens with the apocalypse and kills off humanity at a brisk pace, or Lucifer's Hammer wherein the apocalypse is quite literally looming over the characters from the beginning even if it takes a while to hit, here the apocalypse doesn't even poke its snout above the water until maybe halfway through. But if you can stick it out until that point, it's pretty good.

There is one scene where, if you are like me and if you have read an apocalypse ...more

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Oct 28, 2016 Amy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: female-author

Review originally posted in full at warmdayswillnevercease.wordpress.com.

Rating: 4.5 stars

The start of this book is incredibly slow and you definitely have to work through the first few chapters (possibly even the first volume depending on how you feel about autobiographical stories) before the pace of the story picks up. That can be off-putting so I took off half a star in my rating. Okay, on to the good stuff.

I love the autobiographical elements of this book. It’s definitely centred around Pe Review originally posted in full at warmdayswillnevercease.wordpress.com.

Rating: 4.5 stars

The start of this book is incredibly slow and you definitely have to work through the first few chapters (possibly even the first volume depending on how you feel about autobiographical stories) before the pace of the story picks up. That can be off-putting so I took off half a star in my rating. Okay, on to the good stuff.

I love the autobiographical elements of this book. It’s definitely centred around Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had just died when Mary started writing this book, and it’s clear that the heavenly Adrian is based on Percy. Lord Raymond is obviously Lord Byron and Lionel Verney seems to be based on Mary herself. I think that Mary’s grief for her husband is evident in this book and she memorialised him in the form of Adrian. Since the characters are mainly autobiographical I’m not going to comment on how well they’re written, except for mentioning that Lord Raymond is one of the most wonderful representations of Byron that I’ve ever read. He’s arrogant, passionate, strong-willed, and very charming.

The first volume seems like a fairly standard nineteenth-century novel to be honest, except for the fact that it’s set in 2073 and the monarchy of Britain has fallen. This volume concentrates on forming relationships, both romantic and platonic, and nothing even remotely post-apocalyptic happens in this volume. I think it was clever to set the novel up in this way because it lulls the reader into a false sense of security as it just seems like your run of the mill novel. Also, despite the fact that it’s focused on romance and friendship, this volume is pretty captivating. There’s a lot of complex relationships involved, love-triangles typical of this era, but I love the focus on platonic relationships too.

The second volume introduces us to the plague which threatens to kill off mankind. This section of the novel is full of death and disaster, exactly what you want from a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, and the pace of the novel really picks up. Mary Shelley’s writing in this book is absolutely captivating. I can’t fault it at all. I know that the language is difficult for many people due to the era it was written in but I think it’s worth reading. The final volume is tragic but I think that the ending was perfect. It’s incredibly sad and disheartening but it’s one of the best aspects of the novel in my opinion.

It’s very odd to read a futuristic novel which was written before the industrial revolution. Industry is such a major part of Britain’s past and future that this book just seems weird without it but I think it shows Shelley’s vision and intelligence that she created a book which, although probably inaccurate (although I can’t say that we won’t have abandoned technology in favour of an early nineteenth-century lifestyle by the time 2073 rolls around), which has stood the test of time. Mary Shelley’s vision of a plague which wipes out humanity is still a major threat today, even with advances in medicine, and that means that this novel still works as a post-apocalyptic novel in the twenty-first century.

I genuinely love this book. I think it’s incredibly well-written, the plot is wonderful, and I love that it’s partially autobiographical because it gives an insight into one of my favourite authors. I don’t think that this book can easily be compared to Frankenstein but Shelley’s writing style does seem a little more refined in this book (which makes sense because it was published 8 years after Frankenstein). I would definitely recommend this book to people who love Frankenstein, classic books in general, science fiction, or just anyone who wants to read something a little bit different to the post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction that’s written today. ...more

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Feb 05, 2020 Meghal Bhatt rated it liked it · review of another edition

Bewitched. Enchanted. Enthralled. Smitten. Raptured. These are the words I am thinking to express my delight upon reading this book.

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May 17, 2014 Anna rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, postapocalyptic, apocalyptic

It took me some while to get into ‘The Last Man’, both because of its slow start and my present preoccupation with moving house. The style throughout is extremely florid and capital-R Romantic, as you would expect from Mary Shelley. To set the scene prior to the apocalypse, however, the narrator describes in minute detail how noble, beautiful, and wonderful his friends, wife, and children are. This dominates the first 70 or so pages. There follows a war between the Greeks and Turks, concurrent w It took me some while to get into ‘The Last Man’, both because of its slow start and my present preoccupation with moving house. The style throughout is extremely florid and capital-R Romantic, as you would expect from Mary Shelley. To set the scene prior to the apocalypse, however, the narrator describes in minute detail how noble, beautiful, and wonderful his friends, wife, and children are. This dominates the first 70 or so pages. There follows a war between the Greeks and Turks, concurrent with some emotional melodrama, which advances us to around page 175. Thereafter the novel really gets into its stride, because from then on the main character is Death. Mary Shelley devotes reams of voluptuous, epic description to a plague that over years wipes out the human race. She summons gorgeous metaphors and heights of emotion to convey the horror of events. Moreover, she anticipates the current fascination with post-apocalyptic ruins by repeatedly describing cities denuded of human life; London’s streets are often said to be covered in long grass, for instance.

I quite liked this book just as a novel, but it is really most interesting as a very early example of the post-apocalyptic genre that now has such great popularity. I also found it curious to contemplate Shelley’s ideas of how the UK would be in the 2080s. She thought that there would still be a quasi-feudal aristocracy, but that England would be a republic with a ‘Protector’ (title presumably borrowed from Cromwell). Somewhat sadly considering that Mary Wollstonecraft was her mother, the female characters in this book don’t get much involved in politics and are generally to be found fainting and looking after their children. Perdita and Evadne have more complex lives than just caring for others, but both are very unhappy.

Ultimately, though, the strength of the book lies not with the characters, who are largely props to contextualise the overwhelming disaster of the plague. When Shelley was writing, there was no expectation that a new plague would be cured by scientists working feverishly; in her vision of the 2080s no-one even knows how it spreads. As a meditation on death, at the individual, group, and species level, ‘The Last Man’ is powerful and in places frightening. The inevitability of humanity’s end reminded me of the much later novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Many passages in it demand to be declaimed and the dialogue feels akin to that of a play. For example:

“Hear, O ye inhabitants of the earth,” he cried, “hear thou, all seeing, but most pitiless Heaven! Hear thou too, O tempest-tossed heart, which breathes out these words, yet faints beneath their meaning! Death is among us! The earth is beautiful and flower-bedecked, but she is our grave! The cloud of heaven weep for us - the pageantry of the stars is but our funeral torchlight.”

If you enjoy language of that nature, you will like this novel. I am not surprised to learn that it was the first that she wrote after Percy Shelley’s death. And as ever, I advise you to read the introduction last. One notable comment in it is that the novel was badly reviewed when first published. It was rather before its time. ...more

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Feb 19, 2015 Ebba rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-and-reread-in-2015

So I'm finally done with this beast of a book. I read this one of school and I have pretty mixed feelings about it. Overall, the themes and the plot that Mary Shelley presents are really interesting and I loved the concept of the novel. The first part is really just talk about how diffrent people in our main character's life behave and then the second part is when the plague hits the world and things starts to be a bit complicated.

I really liked the first part, even though nothing important rea So I'm finally done with this beast of a book. I read this one of school and I have pretty mixed feelings about it. Overall, the themes and the plot that Mary Shelley presents are really interesting and I loved the concept of the novel. The first part is really just talk about how diffrent people in our main character's life behave and then the second part is when the plague hits the world and things starts to be a bit complicated.

I really liked the first part, even though nothing important really happended. This is my first Mary Shelley novel and I thought her writing style was great. It was really nice how the plot, the characters and the thoughts and themes were woven into the story without any of them really domintating. I really liked that. The second part is really different from the first, and the ending is fantastic. However, the story is definately a bit dragged out in the middle. This book is quite big, and it feels like that when you're reading the story. I was kind of bored a lot of the times throughout the book which is not really a plus. It felt like a lot of the things that happened were just going on repeat, and it was few things that really stood out in the middle. Though, as I said, the ending is fantastic and the book has many great parts, I just think it would have been more enjoyable if if would have been maybe 100 pages shorter or so.

This book takes place in the future, around the year of 2100, which is ridiculus for us, since people talk like it's the 19th centuray. The only real thing that is "futuristic" is that England is a republic, and I think most of us can agree that it's not the most crazy idea, though that's how it's treated in this book. Also the society in general is really divided into class, which I know is still a thing, but not really like it was back in her time. Well, you can't really blame Shelley for not being able to predict the future. Though, something that was really interesting is the climate disasters that are happeing throughout the book. Even though, her prediction of the actual society might not be the most realistic, the nature aspects does. I would consider myself pretty educated about those sorts of things, and some things Mary Shelley mentions is close to what scientist think will happen if we don't stop destroying the climate. Spooky Shelley.

Overall, I liked this book, but if was nothing more for me. Though, I'm definately going to try out something else by Mary Shelley. (and is it just me or would this make an awesome tv show feat. a bisexual Lionel. Yes it would) ...more

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Nov 28, 2013 Genia Lukin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, classics

Really, what happened to Mary Shelley, the amazing Sheley of frankenstein? Honestly, this book was dull as paint.

What is even more horrifying, perhaps, is the immense social conservatism and lack of inventiveness we are seeing in this bok. It's science-fiction, for heaven's sake! Shelley dealt so beautifully with the struggle of science and the scientist versus the places where one should not tamper, and the limitations of science it seems almost a godsend for a book about a plague that (spoiler Really, what happened to Mary Shelley, the amazing Sheley of frankenstein? Honestly, this book was dull as paint.

What is even more horrifying, perhaps, is the immense social conservatism and lack of inventiveness we are seeing in this bok. It's science-fiction, for heaven's sake! Shelley dealt so beautifully with the struggle of science and the scientist versus the places where one should not tamper, and the limitations of science it seems almost a godsend for a book about a plague that (spoiler, no not really) kills all of mankind. But we see neither science nor science's limitations; we just see a plague happen, people die without attempting (and failing, fine, but at least attempting) to figure it out. Perhaps science even caused this? Why not? Give us something to chew on, here.

The 21st (or is it 22nd? Does it even matter?) century looks suspiciously like the 19th. Even socially, for some reason the establishment of a republic and the dissolution of the British monarchy (oops) did not bring about the dissolution of the aristocracy - perhaps Shelley knew her Brits better than I, but it does seem like she is afraid to take a bold step. More importantly, the narrator is the "son of a gentleman" thus endowed with inherent good qualities, and the main hero of the book is, how not, none other than the last remnant of the British royal family; because, you know, a leader who came out of some factory worker's lineage or a doctor's family is utterly unthinkable. Royal blood will tell.

The book begins with a whoosh, but ends, even with the complete destruction of mankind, with a fizz. its plot is bloated by half a book not even directly relevant to the main story, descriptions through the nose, and long recitals of the virtues of the protagonists, their family, their friends, and their country. Finally, it's chock-full packed with sometimes downright insipid melodrama, which does the otherwise slow and dull plot no real favours whatsoever.

Sad that all this talent and potential came to this, and no more. ...more

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Jan 12, 2015 Catherine Siemann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-group-books, romantics

So not only did Mary Shelley invent modern science fiction with Frankenstein, but she seems also to have invented post-apocalyptic fiction AND semi-gender-swapped Real Person Fanfiction with The Last Man. While the pacing is not that of a modern novel, the reimagining of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Mary herself (as well as several of their children) into fictional characters is delightful for anyone who's a fan of Romantic poets and a reader of their biographies. Shelley's ch ...more

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Mar 11, 2017 Sam rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, adventure, classics, e-books

I'll be honest, I didn't know much alright anything about this book until it came up on my kindle recommendations and since I loved Frankenstein I just had to give it ago, particularly once I read the synopsis for it. And while I really did enjoy Shelley's writing, it didn't feel like a post apocalyptic novel to me at all. Instead it felt more like an old fashioned adventure where rich aristocrates travel the world getting themselves into trouble, pulling along the odd 'outsider' for a bit of a ...more

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Feb 24, 2020 Aubrey rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: disturbation, reality-check, antidote-think-twice-all, reviewed, z-2, r-goodreads, r-2020, antidote-think-twice-read

2.5/5

What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are forced to believe this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us, had the same powers as I—I am also subject to the same laws. In the face of all this we call ourselves lords of creation, wielder

2.5/5

What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are forced to believe this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us, had the same powers as I—I am also subject to the same laws. In the face of all this we call ourselves lords of creation, wielders of the elements, masters of life and death, and we allege in excuse of this arrogance, that though the individual is destroyed, man continues forever.

This is the sort of work that one must cleanly, precisely, and ruthlessly flay as one would a fish for the sake of extracting some amount of worth. There are some real gems of encapsulated thought here, but also some real Anglo eugenics/"great chain" nonsense, all wrapped up in recognizably germinal instances of prototypical post-apocalyptic tropes, one of which would be right at home in an early episode of 'The Walking Dead'. So, a classic? Perhaps if it were half the size and less bloated by nonsensical Übermensch characters that Shelley fanfictioned both herself and her famous compatriots into. I get that this was her method of getting around her ogre of a father-in-law, as well as a matter of well deserved catharsis, but it barely compares with Frankenstein. Considering the jewels stuck in a morass of inconsistent idealism (we all triumph over death, but we can't have standards of beauty and dignity and humanity without forcing some down into the bowels of abject poverty, apparently), it really is a shame that that's how this work decided to run. Did that justify the 132 year gap between the last publication of this work during Shelley's lifetime and the one I review here? Hell no.

We feared the balmy air—we feared the cloudless sky, the flower-covered earth, and delightful woods, for we looked on the fabric of the universe no longer as our dwelling, but our tomb, and the fragrant land smelled to the apprehension of fear like a wide church-yard.

To be perfectly honest, the first half of the book is a wash. Anything outside of the topic of the plague is a rambling and barely credible bildungsroman veering through the id(ea/yl)ls of Anglo Romanticism, and the longer it goes on, the harder it becomes to deal with the inanely gendered characterization and raising up of various tenets of monoculture seriously. The most valuable thing about it is its reflection of Shelley and her circle when all were alive and there was no need for the mournful bent that Shelley is dragging through 300+ pages of in tiny, close set font (I estimate 350-400 words a page in my edition, at least). This set a stage that is familiar to those with any knowledge of Byron and P. Shelley's beginnings and ends, although the Byron incest is toned down and the inherent queerness that Shelley sets up in casting herself as a man who is a friend/subject of her husband could make for some fascinating analyses. Once the plague appears, things get a lot more interesting, and it was rather diverting, if not happily so, to read this in the midst of reports on the coronavirus outbreak and compare Shelley's 21st century fictionalizations with the real incarnations (the latter of which, I should mention, were far more racist/xenophobic in comparison to their narratively composed predecessors, although at one spot Shelley just had to throw in a single magically appearing "negro" as an infectious vector for her self-insert character whatever reason). It is this prescience, demonstrated here and elsewhere, plus a few select and extremely profound turns of phrases that I am giving the benefit of the doubt via my rating as I currently am. Indeed, the scene when the US flees across the Pacific and marauds its way through England is emblematic of Shelley's doubled-edged influence: positive in its prophetic creativity, negative in its prophetic bigotry that continues to plague (heh) modern media. So: an odd, distended, hypocritical, and voraciously brilliant at times duck indeed. If one wishes to read it based on one of more of my quotes, I highly advise flipping through a copy first before committing. Not everyone is a Romantic enthusiast of an especially patient degree, because, let's be honest, it is so rarely worth it to be so.

I ask but one thing; I do not fear His hell, for I have it here; I do not desire His heaven, let me but die and be laid beside them; let me but, when I lie dead, feel my flesh as it moulders, mingle with theirs.

Given my experience with this breed of writing composed in this particular decade, I didn't expect this to go swimmingly. The balance between pieces of gold and utter tedium isn't as severe as it is in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and there are some supremely potent scenes that are ripe for adaptation to a much fuller extent than what Shelley allots to them. That then, is the worth of this book: an originator, as its resurgence in the 1960's has surely given enough people a long enough time of influence that if Shelley had no impact on the zombie/post-apocalyptic renaissance of the late 20th/early 21st century, I'll eat my hat. The irony that this book was sniffed at for its revolutionary tendencies only to appear as supremely reactionary today is a typical dichotomy of narrative aging, and I'm not one to defend it any more than I've done so already. I simply tip my hat at the odd confluence of circumstance, ideal, and tragedy that fueled such writing and take what wealth I can get from its pages. Far better suited to academic perusal than casual reading, I dare say, but as is my attitude with Three Kingdoms these days, why do people climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there. With books, we at least won't be leaving our stinking, sodden corpses on high for the increasing temperatures to melt and send tumbling down in our own climate change version of the plague. Who will be the last person? We shall have to see.

Let no man seek
Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall
Him or his children.

-Milton

...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Oct 22, 2020 Hannah Mumm rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Well that sure was an alarming book to read in the middle of the pandemmie

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

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The Readers Revie...: The Last Man - Week 5 (Vol III - Chapters I - VI)	11	17	Sep 05, 2020 06:33AM
The Readers Revie...: The Last Man - Week 3 (Vol II - Chapters I - V)	14	21	Aug 30, 2020 07:55AM
The Readers Revie...: The Last Man - Week 2 (Vol I - Chapters VI - X)	11	17	Aug 18, 2020 05:13PM
The Readers Revie...: The Last Man - Week 1 (Vol I - Chapters I - V)	17	30	Aug 12, 2020 09:19PM
The Readers Revie...: The Last Man - Background	4	23	Jul 21, 2020 01:32PM
The Readers Revie...: The Last Man - Reading Schedule	3	41	Jul 13, 2020 09:59PM

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About Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraf Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in her own lifetime, though reviewers often missed the political edge to her novels. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered only as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. It was not until 1989, when Emily Sunstein published her prizewinning biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, that a full-length scholarly biography analyzing all of Shelley's letters, journals, and works within their historical context was published.

The well-meaning attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory through the censoring of letters and biographical material contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in the later years of her life added to this impression.

The eclipse of Mary Shelley's reputation as a novelist and biographer meant that, until the last thirty years, most of her works remained out of print, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. She was seen as a one-novel author, if that. In recent decades, however, the republication of almost all her writings has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her voracious reading habits and intensive study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's recognition of herself as an author has also been recognized; after Percy's death, she wrote about her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea". Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. ...more

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