The Last Man
- Downloads
- 100+
- First published
- 1826
- Pages
- 407
Listen to The Last Man Audiobook Free
-
00 - Introduction
11:51 -
01 Vol 1, Ch 01
31:02 -
02 Vol 1, Ch 02
35:13 -
03 Vol 1, Ch 03
24:52 -
04 Vol 1, Ch 04 Pt 1
39:54 -
05 Vol 1, Ch 04 Pt 2
40:05 -
06 Vol 1, Ch 05
28:56 -
07 Vol 1, Ch 06
37:01 -
08 Vol 1, Ch 07
35:02 -
09 Vol 1, Ch 08
49:38 -
10 Vol 1, Ch 09
45:55 -
11 Vol 1, Ch 10
28:03 -
12 Vol 2, Ch 01
39:03 -
13 Vol 2, Ch 02
42:17 -
14 Vol 2, Ch 03
29:31 -
15 Vol 2, Ch 04
27:43 -
16 Vol 2, Ch 05
28:35 -
17 Vol 2, Ch 06
31:13 -
18 Vol 2, Ch 07
24:03 -
19 Vol 2, Ch 08
62:55 -
20 Vol 2, Ch 09
45:44 -
21 Vol 3, Ch 01
26:26 -
22 Vol 3, Ch 02
31:30 -
23 Vol 3, Ch 03
44:46 -
24 Vol 3, Ch 04
48:32 -
25 Vol 3, Ch 05
27:20 -
26 Vol 3, Ch 06
30:40 -
27 Vol 3, Ch 07
33:22 -
28 Vol 3, Ch 08
31:32 -
29 Vol 3, Ch 09
31:16 -
30 Vol 3, Ch 10
36:12
The Last Man (1826) is a public domain work.
The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.
About this book
The Last Man is Mary Shelley's ambitious and haunting novel of the end of the world, published in 1826. Set in a future twenty-first century, it follows Lionel Verney and a small circle of idealistic friends, closely modelled on Shelley's own lost companions, as a devastating plague spreads across the globe and civilisation collapses nation by nation. One by one the people he loves are taken from him, until Verney is left to wander an empty earth as the last human being alive. Long neglected, the book is now recognised as a pioneering work of apocalyptic and science fiction, and as a moving elegy for a vanished generation of poets and dreamers.
From the opening pages
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 control, 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.
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Book facts
- Author
- Mary Shelley
- First published
- 1826
- Reading time
- About 13 hours
- Pages
- 407
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Dystopian
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook