Mary Shelley, "The Last Man"

Everyone has heard of Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein, but her other horror novel The Last Man is far more obscure.  Which is a shame, really, because in many ways it is at least the equal of Frankenstein.

The Last Man is a bleak, post-apocalyptic novel, albeit not as bleak as certain other bleak post-apocalyptic novels.  It follows the protagonist, Lionel Verney, from a childhood of poverty through his rise to political power, and finally to his epic walk and other efforts to escape the plague.

Although Shelley's book misses the mark in several places, one aspect in which it succeeds is in recognizing that "it's about the people, stupid."  Even after a plague has destroyed most of humanity, the important thing is the relationships and interactions between the people who are left.  Call this a "uniquely feminine" perspective if you must, but it nicely pinpoints our priorities as a species, and punctures the claims of many more macho post-apocalyptic works that it's the action and adventure and destruction which is the key to the story.  But none of those things would matter if there weren't people driving the narrative.

It should be noted that The Last Man is also thinly disguised autobiography in places.  Shelley had just lost her husband (some poet dude, you've probably heard of him) when she wrote The Last Man, and she was struggling to come to grips with his legacy, as well as their complicated relationship with Lord Byron.  You can see Shelley working these things out on the page occasionally, but for the most part she manages to avoid the trap of writing a personal memoir disguised as a plague journal.

Although The Last Man is set in the year 2100, one can be forgiven for mistaking it for the year 1826.  Shelley has made no attempts to disguise the present, for which I suppose we can be grateful.  People still ride horses madly through the rain towards their fatal destination, and women still swoon within their petticoats with horror at the creeping disease.

The plague itself is never specifically described, except to mention its fatal nature, and the fact that it is incurable.  (Of course, at the time The Last Man was written, the "germ theory" of disease was still in its infancy.  It would be another 21 years before a Hungarian doctor would notice that women who gave birth at hospitals were wildly more likely to die compare to those who gave birth at home, and who finally linked puerperal fever to the filthy hands of doctors who often came directly from autopsies to the birthing room.)

The final chapter of The Last Man is, unlike most other post-apocalyptic novels written since, soaked with grief and loneliness.  This is another aspect where Shelley's novel deviates from what would become popular literary convention: her protagonist is sad, and alone, and misses humanity, and has no effective way to fight back.  He can simply keep trying to escape, to outrun the plague.  

Unlike what we expect from plague novels, Verney does not find a cure or save the world.  Instead he sits on the beach alone, and weeps.