Literature Network » Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The problem of immunity in The Last Man.(Mary Shelley's novel)(Critical essay)

Content courtesy of

From: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
Date: 20070922
Author:Melville, Peter

When a "last man" narrative presents itself from a first person point of view, the question invariably arises: how does the narrator survive the catastrophe that precipitates the death of all other humans? In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's The Last Man (1826), a novel published in the wake of an explosion of "last man" texts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the answer to this question is left deliberately vague. (1) Shelley's narrator, Lionel Verney, shows no signs of understanding his inexplicable recovery from a plague that decimates the rest of humanity in ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Other Articles on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

About Our Articles: We've partnered with Highbeam Research to provide these article excerpts for your research needs. However, due to copyright laws, we cannot publish the whole article. To view these articles in full length you'll need to use the link above to access the free trial at Highbeam.