I posted some recommendations for exciting, fun and free Victorian literature last week, and I’m going to do a review series soon. In the meantime, though, a review of another nineteenth-century novel that may be worth reading!
Mary Shelley is the mother of science fiction, and The Last Man stands as perhaps the first dystopian novel in existence. On that basis alone, it’s worth thinking about picking up a copy (free on Project Gutenberg). Although critically savaged when it was released, with plague, climate change and mass migration among the topics explored, there’s something eminently modern about many parts of the book.
The novel begins with the story of our young protagonist’s father, whose bad life choices have left him and his younger sister orphans, scarcely educated, and living on the land. The novel ends with our not-so-young protagonist (Lionel) believing himself to be the eponymous Last Man (in the world), after a plague sweeps the globe.
The route Shelley takes us to get there is a surprise, however. Spoilers ahead!
Shelley’s novel is set in a twenty-first-century future (beginning in 2073) where Britain has become a Republic, and the first section of the novel entwines meditations on political structure with the sort of revolving cast of lovers that you might see in an Austen novel.
Lionel, our rebellious shepherd, and his younger sister, Perdita, are brought into civilisation by the last reigning king’s heir, Adrian, who honours the friendship between their fathers before Lionel’s father was exiled from court. While Adrian seems content with having lost his crown to the Republic, his mother and her favourites plot to return Britain to a monarchy, with the dastardly Lord Raymond scheming to marry Adrian’s sister (Idris) and have the monarchy reinstalled with him as king. The detailed discussion of debates in Parliament and constitutional processes explains why Wikipedia notes that Mary Shelley spent time watching House of Commons debates while writing the novel. And although it sounds potentially dull, the political intrigue is actually really fascinating (especially to me; I’m working on a book about Parliament and its people!).
Of course, Lord Raymond loves Perdita, and Lionel loves Idris, and so at the last moment Lord Raymond abandons his nearly successful monarchist scheme for a loving marriage. The former Queen resists and tries to spirit away her daughter to marry a continental prince, but after rescuing her from abduction to Austria, Lionel marries Idris. Hurrah, all is well.
And then they scheme to get Lord Raymond the highest position in the land, anyway, so it’s almost like he was king. Except, you’re barely halfway through Volume 1 at this point, so you know that’s not going to last, and you’re still glancing ahead to try to figure out when the plague and devastation is going to get going. Talk about tension!
Fear not. The return of a former lover (Evadne) destroys Lord Raymond’s marriage, and in a fit of Byronesque pique he storms off to rejoin a war between Turkey and Greece, having fought there previously. And that’s where we find a new story starting.
It’s here, at the start of Book 2, that we move from early-nineteenth-century romance and constitutional issues to the dystopian novel that we’ve been promised. Everyone ends up in the war (even Evadne; women can fight too, you know), and at the walls of Constantinople our protagonists first encounter a plague that will ravage the world throughout the rest of the novel.
Black Plague epidemics had been reported through the eighteenth century after the Great Plague of 1738, and into the nineteenth, in Constantinople but also across Eurasia and around the Mediterranean, as well as there being various other waves of disease that killed many (Shelley lost one child to malaria and another to typhus). This plague, however, is not merely medical. It’s accompanied by dramatic climate change like storms, floods and reports of a black sun in the sky.
Volumes 2 and 3 therefore reflect on the dramatic, panicked migration of people that arises from such devastation. Factionalisation sets in, and although Adrian, now in charge of most things, tries valiantly to bring unity and organisation. As troops of people move slowly in search of better climates where the plague might be less devastating, their numbers continue to fall. Only four make it to Switzerland, and the description of their peaceful time there borrows something from Shelley’s own travels, in particular with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron and their friends.
Tragedies continue, and finally Lionel makes it to Rome alone, where he and his faithful sheepdog find no-one, and he continues his searches on foot for other plague survivors as the novel ends, our protagonist a lonely shepherd once more.
It sometimes feel like there are at least two separate books here pinned together, and it’s worth picking up this book with that in mind. At times Shelley is dry and didactic, the discussion about constitutional and republican sentiments in particular. But Shelley is exploring some fascinating ideas and some of the very human emotions and responses to crisis that still seem to hold today. The themes of loneliness, often read biographically, but also her deep engagement with studies of medicine and immunity, offer something for readers with a wide range of interests.
Originally published at https://graciado.substack.com.
