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The Ends of Politics in The Last Man
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2023
“The last man!” Mary Shelley wrote in her journal for May 1824. “Yes I may well describe that solitary being’s feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.”1 Shelley experienced a terrible catalogue of loss over her lifetime, beginning a few days after her birth with the death of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft. The death by drowning in 1822 of her husband Percy provides an obvious reference point for her remarks identifying with the “last man,” the end point of “a beloved race,” others “extinct” before her. But the significance of Shelley’s identification with the “last man” – and its relevance to her subsequent novel of that title – only emerges fully when we take account of another pivotal figure from Shelley’s life and the late Romantic age. Byron had died the previous month, but at the time of her journal entry, Shelley believed he was still alive.
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