The Last Man and the Journal of Sorrow

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley began writing her 'Journal of Sorrow' (c.1822--6) three months after the devastating loss of her husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to drowning. In the privacy of the diary's pages, she grapples with her overwhelming grief over the tragic losses of her young husband, three of their children, and their friend the poet Lord Byron. Shelley ultimately resisted a suicidal depression by throwing herself into writing the allegorical plague novel and roman-à-clef, The Last Man (1826). Rooted in her own experiences of plagues both real and metaphorical, Shelley set The Last Man in the aftermath of a pestilential, centuries-long war between Greece and Turkey in the late twenty-first century. The novel is an existential and political thought experiment which provokes the mortal reader to contemplate the meaning of life and death in the face of the human-made disasters of war, epidemic, and species extinction. Through the ever-hopeful voice of the narrator Lionel Verney, the eponymous last man, Shelley leads readers to consider: what should be done after a massive global disaster?

This edition presents these two masterpieces together, with a new editorial introduction and notes for both texts, giving readers profound insight into Shelley's enduring relevance for existential philosophy, life writing, post-apocalyptic literature, and political thought.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,Eileen M. Hunt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 05/12/2026
Pages: 592
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 7.78h x 5.35w x 1.06d
ISBN: 9780198892793

About the Author
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Eileen Hunt is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame whose scholarly interests cover modern political thought, feminism, the family, rights, ethics of technology, and philosophy and literature. She has authored or edited ten books and her essays, political analyses, reviews, and opinion pieces have appeared in Aeon Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Public Seminar, and The Times Literary Supplement. Her scholarship on Wollstonecraft and Shelley has been supported by the NEH, the ACLS, the Sloan Foundation, and the Bodleian Libraries.