Revolution and Ruin: We Begin at the End of the World

Mary Shelley's The Last Man and the Denial of Redemption

Hello, and welcome to the first podcast episode of Revolution and Ruin: Reading the European 19th Century.

In this inaugural episode, Joseph and Jessa discuss Mary Shelley's The Last Man, a prophetic novel about disease, war, and the end of mankind. Unlike the apocalyptic spectacles of your standard end of the world movies and television shows, Shelley's slow burn gets into the grief and despair of humanity's end. Shelley was born at the tail end of the French Revolution and just before the revolutions of 1848, and she is invested in the questions of her era: how should a nation organize itself? how should resources be distributed? how is a person to live amid disruption and unpredictability? And what is the point of making art during tumult?

Audio below or in the main TCWD podcast feed. Shownotes, references, and reader discussion after the paywall.