The Last Man

The Last Man by Mary Shelley is a landmark novel that invented the human extinction genre and initiated climate fiction. It imagines a world where newly forged communities and reverence for nature rise from the ashes of a pandemic-ravaged society. This edition is now available for the first time in Penguin Classics, with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit.

Written while Mary Shelley was in a self-imposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children—amidst intersecting crises such as the climate-changing Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak—The Last Man (1826) stands as the first end-of-mankind novel. It is an early work of climate fiction and a prophetic depiction of environmental change.

Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel tells of a deadly pandemic that leaves a lone survivor. It follows his journey through a post-apocalyptic world, devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature. Rather than succumb to despair, Shelley uses the now-ubiquitous end-times plot to imagine a new world where freshly formed communities and alternative ways of being stand in contrast to self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, allowing nature to reign mightily over humanity. This provides a timely message for our current era of climate collapse and political upheaval.

Brimming with political intrigue and love triangles involving characters based on Percy Shelley and the scandal-dogged poet Lord Byron, the novel also addresses partisan dysfunction, imperial warfare, refugee crises, and economic collapse. It brings the legacy of Shelley's radically progressive parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, to bear on present-day questions about creating a better world less centred around "man".

As Shelley's second major novel after Frankenstein, The Last Man casts a half-sceptical eye on romantic ideals of utopian perfection and natural plenitude, while looking forward to a greener future where our species develops new relationships with non-human life and the planet.