The Nexus Archive
Gothic Fiction · Novel
The Last Man
by Mary Shelley · The Maker's Witness · British Romanticism, 1797-1851
Shelley's apocalyptic novel of friendship, politics, love, plague, and the collapse of a world that thought it had a future.
- Brutal
- 1826
- ~13 hr read
- 12 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Volume I guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
A World After Its Future
Mary Shelley published The Last Man in 1826, after the circle that had formed her youth had been broken by death. Percy Shelley had drowned in 1822; Lord Byron died in Greece in 1824; several of her children were already gone. The novel turns that private desolation outward until grief becomes a whole world's condition.
Shelley sets this imagined history in the late twenty-first century. Its people want things familiar in any age: affection, useful work, public honour and a future for their children. Their confidence in progress sits beside a question that wealth and power cannot settle. What gives a human life meaning when the people who share it are lost?
The story begins with a fictional discovery near Naples. Scattered writings in the cave of the ancient Sibyl, a prophetess, become a history of the future. The person who joins these fragments admits that grief and imagination shape the result. That uncertain frame makes the novel both a prophecy and an act of remembrance. Its grand language keeps returning to the fragile bonds between people.
The opening pages
Volume I, Chapter I
I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when balanced in the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent and more numerous population. So true it is, that man’s mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister. England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth’s very centre was fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have cost neither my imagination nor understanding an effort.
My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man’s life. With regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance. My father was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his bark of life to be impelled by these winds, without adding reason as the rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage. His extraction was obscure; but circumstances brought him early into public notice, and his small paternal property was soon dissipated in the splendid scene of fashion and luxury in which he was an actor. During the short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-bred triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sovereign, who escaped from the intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of kingly business, to find never-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit in his society. My father’s impulses, never under his own controul, perpetually led him into difficulties from which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself received with intoxicating flattery.
Chapter guides · 12
Volume I
A Prophecy Made from Fragments
An imagined discovery gives the future history a voice from the past.
The main idea
The Introduction presents the story as a prophecy recovered from scattered leaves. Its editor has to connect and reshape the fragments. The account therefore carries both the promise of an ancient vision and the limits of the person interpreting it.
What happens
Two travellers explore a cave near Naples in 1818. Beyond the rooms shown by their guides, they find writings on leaves and other fragile surfaces. They collect the pieces they can read. Later, the editor works on them alone, mourns the lost companion and admits that personal thoughts may have changed the prophecy. Preparing the story offers some relief from grief.
Volume I, Chapter III
A Friend Lost to Grief
Lionel returns from Vienna to find Adrian cut off from his friends.
The main idea
Lionel has gained a place in fashionable society, but it cannot replace Adrian's friendship. The contrast with Lord Raymond also brings two kinds of ambition into view. Raymond seeks power and personal glory. Adrian wants a fairer society and feels deeply for other people.
What happens
After two years as the ambassador's private secretary in Vienna, Lionel hears troubling reports about Adrian. He returns to England and finds Perdita living near Windsor. She explains that Adrian loves Evadne, who loves Raymond instead. Adrian has followed Evadne when she leaves for Paris. Grief has broken Adrian's health and then his mind. Perdita has not seen him since, and he lives hidden, attended by people his mother chooses.
Volume I, Chapter VI
An Election and a Reunion
Raymond wins public office while Perdita fears losing their life together.
Volume I, Chapter X
War Divides the Family
Adrian returns wounded, while Perdita sets out to find Raymond.
Volume II, Chapter IV
Hope Behind a Narrow Border
England feels safe while plague spreads abroad.
Volume II, Chapter VI
Adrian Takes Responsibility
As plague empties London, Adrian accepts the work that Ryland abandons.
Volume II, Chapter IX
Care in a Broken Country
Adrian checks a battle, and the survivors struggle through winter.
Volume III, Chapter I
A Country Without Its People
The survivors plan to leave England because comfort now requires too much labour.
Volume III, Chapter IV
Peace Among the Last Travellers
After a stormy delay at Dover, Adrian settles a quarrel in Paris without force.
Volume III, Chapter VI
A False Promise Breaks
The prophet's claim to protect his followers collapses when his crimes are exposed.
Volume III, Chapter IX
Alone After the Wreck
A voyage meant to reunite Clara with her parents' memory leaves Lionel without a companion.
Volume III, Chapter X
The Last Witness
Lionel writes his history, then prepares to leave Rome with his dog.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Last Man?
- About 13 hr in total.
- How difficult is The Last Man?
- Brutal. A long novel; about 13 hours of reading.
- Can I read The Last Man for free?
- The Last Man is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 12 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while still very young, drawing on Romantic science, grief, philosophical debate, and gothic storytelling. The novel became one of the foundation texts for modern horror and science fiction.
“Who is responsible for the suffering created by ambition?”
Shelley gives Nexus a monster story with philosophical force: creation becomes ethics, and fear becomes a question of accountability.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Last Man is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.