The Last Man

The Last Man is a novel by the English writer Mary Shelley, first published in 1826. It is set late in the twenty-first century, and it is one of the earliest works of dystopian fiction.

Lionel Verney is the orphaned son of a nobleman who was cast aside, and he begins the book lawless and resentful until a friendship with Adrian, Earl of Windsor and son of the last king of England, draws him towards scholarship and republican politics. Around them Shelley assembles a cast of ambition and principle: Lord Raymond, famous for fighting for Greece and eventually made Lord Protector, and Perdita, Verney's sister, who marries him. The novel imagines Britain as a republic, and Shelley attended sittings of the House of Commons to write its politics.

A bubonic plague enters the story and moves across the globe until humanity is nearly gone, and the book is presented as a prophecy found among writings in a cave near Naples. Shelley's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend Lord Byron had both died shortly before the novel appeared, and the story carries allusions to them and to her own circle.