The Last Man (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192838652 ISBN 13: 9780192838650

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

'The last man! I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.' Mary Shelley, Journal (May 1824). Best remembered as the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man eight years later, on returning to England from Italy after her husband's death. It is the twenty-first century, and England is a republic governed by a ruling elite, one of whom, Adrian, Earl of Windsor, has introduced a Cumbrian boy to the circle. This outsider, Lionel Verney, narrates the story, a tale of complicated, tragic love, and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague. The Last Man also functions as an intriguing roman à clef, for the saintly Adrian is a monument to Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his friend Lord Raymond is a portrait of Byron. The novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, as Shelley demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem her doomed characters.

About this title

Review:

"Anne McWhir's edition of The Last Man is first rate! Mary Shelley's novel is well served by a careful editor who provides an informed introduction, comprehensive annotations, and well-chosen appendices that contextualize this richly complex novel--Shelley herself would have been pleased!"--Charles E. Robinson

Comments:

“Anne McWhir’s edition of The Last Man is first rate! Mary Shelley’s novel is well served by a careful editor who provides an informed introduction, comprehensive annotations, and well-chosen appendices that contextualize this richly complex novel—Shelley herself would have been pleased!” — Charles E. Robinson, University of Delaware

“Anne McWhir’s edition of The Last Man is first rate! Mary Shelley’s novel is well served by a careful editor who provides an informed introduction, comprehensive annotations, and well-chosen appendices that contextualize this richly complex novel—Shelley herself would have been pleased!” — Charles E. Robinson, University of Delaware

"Anne McWhir's edition of The Last Man is first rate! Mary Shelley's novel is well served by a careful editor who provides an informed introduction, comprehensive annotations, and well-chosen appendices that contextualize this richly complex novel--Shelley herself would have been pleased!" -- Charles E. Robinson, University of Delaware

"Anne McWhir's edition of The Last Man is first rate! Mary Shelley's novel is well served by a careful editor who provides an informed introduction, comprehensive annotations, and well-chosen appendices that contextualize this richly complex novel--Shelley herself would have been pleased!" -- Charles E. Robinson, University of Delaware

From the Publisher:

The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.

Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0192838652
• ISBN 13: 9780192838650
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Paley Morton D.