LoveReading4Kids Says
LoveReading4Kids Says
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 a 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.
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The Last Man Synopsis
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 a 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.
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About Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The childhood of Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851), sounds rather like a dark fairy-tale. Her mother died giving birth to her and she was brought up by a remote father and a step-mother who hated her. Her step-sister was a depressive and later committed suicide and Mary had little in common with her step-brother or her half-brother. As a young girl, she escaped into books and would often read by the side of her mother’s tomb.
In 1813 Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was only twenty-one but was already unhappily married. He was destined to be one of the geniuses of English poetry. The two fell in love and eloped, despite Mary’s age. Her father, William Godwin, disowned her, but she and Shelley were married in 1816. They settled in Italy but tragedy seemed to follow them. Only one of their four children lived very long and then, in 1822, when he was just thirty, Shelley was drowned. Mary lived for another thirty years but she lost the promise that she had shown in the company of her brilliant husband and his friends, such as the poet Lord Byron. The single book that we remember her for belonged to her happy time in Italy.
It was Byron who suggested in 1817, that they each write a horror story. The result in Mary’s case, was Frankenstein. As well as being creepier than most other books in the genre, Frankenstein has a far better story-line and is in the end, both moving and tragic. Amazingly, a young girl of twenty gave us the book whose name has become synonymous with horror.
More About Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
