ABSTRACT
In her futuristic roman-à-clef The Last Man, Mary Shelley presents a portrait of Byron as warrior hero and saviour of Greece, a role Byron aspired to but realized only in legend after his death. The Last Man is a powerfully anti-martial text in which the masculine pursuit of military glory plays a major role in the annihilation of the world's population. As the primary target of this polemic, the figure of Raymond emphasizes the heroic rather than the mock-heroic elements of Byron's martial self-conception. In addition to emphasizing Byron's martial ambitions, Shelley's portrait of the poet is useful because of the form of action through which Raymond seeks to gain his place in history: the taking of the Golden City, Constantinople. Shelley's choice of a siege as the central action of her novel suggests her identification of it as a key element in Byron's treatment and understanding of war in his writing.
