Content Warning: This section features discussions of death by suicide, racism, xenophobia, sexism, sexual assault, and mass death.

The introduction of The Last Man establishes the novel’s frame story, in which a traveler in 1818 discovers a prophecy from a Sibyl’s cave in Naples. The prophecy reveals the story of the last man to survive after a plague at the end of the 21st century. The traveler and their companion take some of the leaves on which the prophecy is written in many languages, and translate them as the novel that follows.

Lionel Verney, the protagonist and narrator of the story, describes his parents and childhood. His father was once a good friend of the king, but his spendthrift ways eventually strained their relations. The elder Verney moved to Cumberland, where his sadness brought on a fever. He married a cottage girl who tended to him during his sickness, and they had two children, Lionel (the narrator) and Perdita. Lionel’s mother was left penniless after his father’s final letter to the king received no reply, and she soon died shortly afterward too.

Lionel works as a shepherd boy as he grows older, becoming daring and reckless.