Seasons in a Pandemic: Mary Shelley on What Makes Life Worth Living and Nature's Beauty as a Lifeline to Regaining Sanity
Half a century before Walt Whitman considered what makes life worth living when a paralytic stroke boughed him to the ground of being, Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797-February 1, 1851) placed that question at the beating heart of The Last Man ( | public library ) - the 1826 novel she wrote in the bleakest period of her life: after the deaths of three of her children, two by widespread infectious diseases that science has since contained; after the love of her life, Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in a boating accident.
