Mary Shelley's Landmark Novel That Invented The Human Extinction Genre And Initiated Climate Fiction, Imagining A World Where Newly-forged Communities And Reverence For Nature Rises From The Ashes Of A Pandemic-ravaged Society, Now For The First Time In Penguin Classics, With A Foreword By Rebecca Solnit A Penguin Classic Written While Mary Shelley Was In A Self-imposed Lockdown After The Loss Of Her Husband And Children, And In The Wake Of Intersecting Crises Including The Climate-changing Mount Tambora Eruption And A Raging Cholera Outbreak, The Last Man (1826) Is The First End-of-mankind Novel, An Early Work Of Climate Fiction, And A Prophetic Depiction Of Environmental Change. Set In The Late Twenty-first Century, The Book Tells Of A Deadly Pandemic That Leaves A Lone Survivor, And Follows His Journey Through A Post-apocalyptic World That's Devoid Of Humanity And Reclaimed By Nature. But Rather Than Give In To Despair, Shelley Uses The Now-ubiquitous End-times Plot To Imagine A New World Where Freshly-formed Communities And Alternative Ways Of Being Stand In For Self-important Politicians Serving Corrupt Institutions, And Where Nature Reigns Mightily Over Humanity-a Timely Message For Our Current Era Of Climate Collapse And Political Upheaval. Brimming With Political Intrigue And Love Triangles Around Characters Based On Percy Shelley And Scandal-dogged Poet Lord Byron, The Novel Also Broaches Partisan Dysfunction, Imperial Warfare, Refugee Crises, And Economic Collapse-and Brings The Legacy Of Her Radically Progressive Parents, William Godwin And Mary Wollstonecraft, To Bear On Present-day Questions About Making A Better World Less Centered Around Man. Shelley's Second Major Novel After Frankenstein, The Last Man Casts A Half-skeptical Eye On Romantic Ideals Of Utopian Perfection And Natural Plenitude While Looking Ahead To A Greener Future In Which Our Species Develops New Relationships With Non-human Life And The Planet-- Provided By Publisher.