Guide to the classics: Mary Shelley’s 'The Last Man' is a prophecy of life in a global pandemic

Daily life during pandemic times in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province. Shelley’s novel 'The Last Man' asks us to imagine a world in which humans become extinct and the world seems better for it, causing the last survivor to question his right to existence. Photo: AFP

Mary Shelley is famous for one novel – her first, Frankenstein (1819). Its extraordinary career in adaptation began almost from the point of publication, and it has had a long afterlife as a keyword in our culture. Frankenstein speaks to us now in our fears of scientific overreach, our difficulties in recognising our shared humanity.

But her neglected later book The Last Man (1826) has the most to say to us in our present moment of crisis and global pandemic.