ABSTRACT
Polar exploration in the early nineteenth century has long stood as an icon for the Romantic journey of self-discovery. The imminence of apocalypse, and its precarious relationship with some sort of ensuing millennium, is also a key part of the Romantic sensibility. The persuasive historical data, however, has divided the fin de siecle 'last men' from their Romantic predecessors, in practice if not in theory. Stableford notes the influence of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Last Man on late-Victorian speculative eschatological fantasy, but characterises it as one of a number of isolated eruptions by "literary mavericks", paving the way for the late-Victorian emergence of the science fiction genre proper. The merging of quasi-secular end into quasi-religious beginning closes The Purple Cloud, and in so doing both lays its Romantic roots bare, and shows how Shiel is playing with them.
