Last Man

Product Description

The Last Man is Mary Shelleys apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century the novel unfolds a sombre & pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley & Byron yet rejects Romanticism & its faith in art & nature. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman & the radical philosopher William Godwin. Her mother died ten days after her birth & the young child was educated through contact with her fathers intellectual circle & her own reading. She met Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812; they eloped in July 1814. In the summer of 1816 she began her first & most famous novel Frankenstein. Three of her children died in early infancy & in 1822 her husband was drowned. Mary returned to England with her surviving son & wrote novels short stories & accounts of her travels; she was the first editor of P.B. Shelleys poetry & verse.