This mapping recreates 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 plottin and The Last Man wanders alone.

The map is an online part of a hybrid digital/traditional project. There is also a paper, responding to the mapping here, titled “Rambles in the Fantastic: Digital Mapping Mary Shelley’s Last Man.” The paper will appear in Spaces of the Fantastic, edited by David Punter and C. Bruna Mancini.

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 include a button to take you to the map…push the small green “start” button below the map to get it to load properly, then the “play” button to watch the pathways. Information to the right discusses the pathways you can follow and provides contexts.

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!

 

 

Link to dynamic, interactive digital map of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man created by Dr. David Sandner