Mary Shelley

I am always interested in reading letters written from the perspectives of now famous authors, but Mary Shelley's are more interesting than I anticipated. Her letters tend to gloss over the miserable things that occur in her life and emphasize what good happens, but I'm interested in the letter to Maria Gisborne on August 15th, 1822. She laments some of the horrible things that have "crushed my hopes" and recounts the "last miserable months of my disastrous life." This cathartic release of what she is truly upset about is interesting because it is reflected in The Last Man as well, specifically in the first few paragraphs.

Her lamentation about the decline of the human race in the beginning of the novel excerpt is similar to the specific letter I mentioned, on page 907 of the BA. The beginning of the excerpt calls to "black Melancholy!" and "thy Cimmerian solitude," both of which bring to light parallels between The Last Man and Shelley's life itself. Shelley lost a child in the same manner as one of the book characters, and this same sort of hopelessness that permeates The Last Man is one that is present in her letters as well, where though she is surrounded by the beautiful, natural world, she cannot help but be upset by her misfortune.

This contrast between internal misfortune and unhappiness and the beauty of the natural world is also parallelled in both pieces of work. In the letter, Shelley emphasizes the outside world and how the country outside their family home was beautiful, though she took no joy in it. In The Last Man on page 883, she discusses how the sea is beautiful and still and a wonderful color of blue, but then immediately relates that beauty to the horrors that still exist on land. The constant return to unhappiness and negativity is a common theme in both works, and is a likely result of Shelley's misfortunes in her life.