The Last Man

Unique Elements Detailed 19th Century Historical Context/Timeline Explore the wonders and magic of this unforgettable masterpiece and take an exhilarating step back in time! Synopsis: The Last Man by English author Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) is an apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel first published in 1826. The story takes place in a futuristic Europe in the late 21st century, when a strange outbreak of plague ravaged the country, nearly wiping out civilization. The Last Man, after Frankenstein, was one of Mary Shelley's most significant books. The novel provides a future vision reacting against Romanticism and includes fascinating descriptions of family friend, Lord Byron, and Mary's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley (who died at sea several years before.) Excerpt: ‘I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when balanced in the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent and more numerous population. So true it is, that man’s mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister. England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth’s very centre was fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have cost neither my imagination nor understanding an effort.’