The Last Man

England, at the end of the 21st century, has become a republic. The last king has abdicated peacefully, and the egalitarian dream is close to realisation. But a plague is gathering in the East that will soon lay waste to human society. Written in 1822, The Last Man is a multi-stranded apocalyptic story about a mysterious disease that devastates humankind, leaving one lone survivor. Like Mary Shelley’s first novel Frankenstein, it speaks to some of our deepest fears. As introducer Sarah Hall puts it, ‘No noble arrangement, product of enlightenment or utopian dream is able to vanquish the foe’.