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The Prelude is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote the first version of the poem when he was 28, and worked over for the rest of his long life without publishing it. He never gave it a title; he called it the "poem to Coleridge" or the "poem on the growth of my own mind."

The work is a poetic reflection on Wordsworth's own sense of his poetic vocation as it developed over the course of his life in 14 books. It was intended to be the prologue to a long three-part philosophical poem Wordsworth planned to call The Recluse. Though Wordsworth planned this project when he was in his late 20s, he went to his grave at 80 years old having published only the second part (The Excursion), and leaving no more than fragments of the rest.

It was published after Wordsworth's death in 1850 by Wordsworth's widow Mary, who chose to name it The Prelude. The title was meant to suggest that it was written as the introduction to a longer work, and that it was one of the poet's earlier poems rather than his last.

The Prelude is arguably the poet's greatest work; and it is noteworthy that Wordsworth's fame in his lifetime as the architect of Romantic Conservatism was actually achieved without it. It is noticeable how different it is from the epic poem that preceded it: whilst Milton (mentioned by name in line 169 of Book One) chose to write Paradise Lost about God`s creation and the Fall, Wordsworth chooses his own mind as a subject worthy of epic.

The Fourteen Books of this spiritual autobiography holds Wordsworth's persistent metaphor that life is a circular journey whose end is "to arrive where we started / And know that place for the first time" (T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," lines 241-42). Wordsworth's Prelude opens with a literal journey whose chosen goal is the Vale of Grasmere. The Prelude narrates a number of later journeys, most notably the crossing of the Alps in book VI and, in the beginning of the final book, the climactic ascent of Snowdon. In the course of the poem, such literal journeys become the metaphorical vehicle for a spiritual journey -- the quest in the poet's memory.

Although the episodes of the Prelude are recognizable events from Wordsworth's life, they are interpreted in retrospect, reordered in sequence, retold as dramas involving the interaction between the mind and nature and between the creative imagination and the force of history. Through the journeys Wordsworth tries to reconstitute the grounds of hope in a dark time of post-revolutionary reaction and despair.^[1]

1. ^ From The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition 2006

Sources

• Bartleby.com's complete poetical works by Wordsworth
• Book I, "Introduction, Childhood, and School-time"
• Book II, "School-time continued"
• Book III, "Residence at Cambridge"
• Book IV, "Summer Vacation"
• Book V, "Books"
• Book VI, "Cambridge, and the Alps"
• Book VII, "Residence in London"
• Book VIII, "Restrospect, Love of Nature leading to Love of Man"
• Book IX, "Residence in France"
• Book X, "Residence in France continued"
• Book XI, "France"
• Book XII, "Imagination and Taste; How Impaired and Restored"
• Book XIII, "Imagination and Taste continued"
• Book XIV, "Conclusion"

Resources

• James Fotheringham (1899). Wordsworth's "Prelude" as a study of education. From Internet Archive