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*The Last Man*, Mary Shelley, 1826
Jul. 27th, 2012 06:51 pmThis is an apocalyptic end of the world book. I had not realised this genre existed in the 19th century, but it turns out that there was a whole run of books on this theme at the time. Indeed, Shelley was criticised for being too close to the 1805 *Last Man*.
So, basically, it is the story of the whole world being wiped out by plague. Nowadays there would have been zombies too. I believe there are in the 2008 movie version.
There’s a lot of flowery early 19th century prose about the coming of Death, the great leveller, who takes kings and paupers, against whom no man can fight and who no door can bar.
It is also a roman a clef which features Byron (the passionate, but unprincipled Lord Raymond who runs off to free Greece from the Turks) and her husband (Adrian, Earl of Windsor who is the son of the last king of England and is motivated by republican principles). The narrator is based on Shelley herself - Lionel Verney, the Last Man.
There is a lot of debate about Burkean philosophy, the French revolution and romanticism, all pressing concerns of the 1820s and assumed to still be in the future. OTOH, if I were reading this in the 1970s the whole debate about freeing Greece from the Turks would seem eerily prescient.
There is very little of what we would nowdays call SF. There’s almost no emphasis on technology, except that at one point they fly across the country in a hot air balloon. The assumption is that the future looks pretty much like then - America is a frontier, the Pope is a significant power, the nobility are a significant political force, and the world is agricultural. What is important to her is the debate about philosophy.
So, basically, it is the story of the whole world being wiped out by plague. Nowadays there would have been zombies too. I believe there are in the 2008 movie version.
There’s a lot of flowery early 19th century prose about the coming of Death, the great leveller, who takes kings and paupers, against whom no man can fight and who no door can bar.
It is also a roman a clef which features Byron (the passionate, but unprincipled Lord Raymond who runs off to free Greece from the Turks) and her husband (Adrian, Earl of Windsor who is the son of the last king of England and is motivated by republican principles). The narrator is based on Shelley herself - Lionel Verney, the Last Man.
There is a lot of debate about Burkean philosophy, the French revolution and romanticism, all pressing concerns of the 1820s and assumed to still be in the future. OTOH, if I were reading this in the 1970s the whole debate about freeing Greece from the Turks would seem eerily prescient.
There is very little of what we would nowdays call SF. There’s almost no emphasis on technology, except that at one point they fly across the country in a hot air balloon. The assumption is that the future looks pretty much like then - America is a frontier, the Pope is a significant power, the nobility are a significant political force, and the world is agricultural. What is important to her is the debate about philosophy.
