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The Conversation ·Smart escape

Lessons for the 21st Century From a 200-year-old Book by ‘Frankenstein’ Author Mary Shelley

by Eileen Hunt, Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

Published 2026-09-23 12:44:09+00:00

How did a private diary of grief become a story about the end of the world?

0:00 / 7:44 · Narrator Gacrux

Context

Mary Shelley wrote her second science fiction novel after losing her husband and three of her children. Published on 23 September 2026, the essay asks what a two-hundred-year-old story about a global plague reveals about modern crises. The central question is how private grief scales into a warning about human extinction. It wonders how a story ending with a single survivor drifting on a ruined planet still manages to offer a practical model for facing environmental disasters.

Show notes

An overview of Mary Shelley's 1826 novel "The Last Man," a story of a global plague that helped establish the genre of postapocalyptic fiction. The author outlines the book's three-part plot and uses Shelley's private diaries to trace the story's origins in her personal grief. The analysis shows how a 200-year-old text anticipates modern fears about extreme weather, pandemics, and political failure.

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