I mapped MS’s Last Man as part of a hybrid digital/traditional project. I published an essay (on paper), responding to the mapping here, titled “Rambles in the Fantastic: Digital Mapping Mary Shelley’s Last Man” in Spaces of the Fantastic (20121), edited by David Punter and C. Bruna Mancini.
The online mapping recreated Lionel Verney’s movements from Shelley’s novel in order to consider spatiality in her work. Her better-known Frankenstein is equally preoccupied with landscape and movement, but Last Man turns more sharply into geography and its relation to the geopolitical. Nations and wars, elections and religious divisions, move her plot…until the plague ends plotting and the titular Last Man wanders alone.
The map and its pathways for the wars, the Last Man’s wandering, and the movement of the plague itself was made using online digital tools at VisualEyes6. I included a button to take you to the map…but the map no longer works.
Below are screenshots of the various mappings.
First, Verney’s travels from the Lake District of his youth to becoming a cosmopolitan involved in political life.
Second, the plague that arises out of the siege of Constantinople encroaches upon Europe.
Finally, the survivors in Britain begin a march, first to Paris, then on toward Rome. Verney will be alone when he arrives in Rome…The Last Man!
