Written while Mary Shelley was in a self-imposed lockdown after the loss of her husband and children, and in the wake of the climate-changing Mount Tambora eruption and a raging cholera outbreak, The Last Man is the first end-of-mankind novel, an early work of climate fiction, and a prophetic depiction of environmental change. Set in the late twenty-first century, the book tells' of a deadly pandemic that leaves a lone survivor, following his journey through a post apocalyptic world that's devoid of humanity and reclaimed by nature. But rather than give in to despair, Shelley uses the now-ubiquitous end-times plot to imagine a new world where communities and alternative ways of being stand in for self-important politicians serving corrupt institutions, and where nature reigns over humanity. Shelley's second major novel after Frankenstein, The Last Man looks ahead to a greener future in which our species develops new relationships with nonhuman life and the planet.
