The Prelude: Parallel Text

William Wordsworth

ISBN 10: 0140422145 / ISBN 13: 9780140422146

Published by Penguin Books Ltd, 1976

About this Item

William Wordsworth's long poem The Prelude is a fascinating work-as autobiography, the fruit of many attempts at understanding the formative period of Wordsworth's life; as a fragment of historical evidence from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years; as an unstable literary text, which mutated through at least five discernable versions from 1799-1839; and as a poem offering the pleasures of blank verse in a variety and to an intensity unmatched in English non-dramatic poetry. In this collection, leading Wordsworth scholar Stephen Gill, gathers together thirteen influential essays on The Prelude. The volume as a whole is a useful and inspiring companion for students and general readers of Wordsworth's greatest, but most demanding poem.

Seller Inventory # 00097900795

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Prelude: Parallel Text
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication Date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140422145
• ISBN 13: 9780140422146
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

First published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative work. The great Romantic poem of human consciousness, it takes as its theme 'the growth of a poet's mind': leading the reader back to Wordsworth's formative moments of childhood and youth, and detailing his experiences as a radical undergraduate in France at the time of the Revolution. Initially inspired by Coleridge's exhortation that Wordsworth write a work upon the French Revolution, The Prelude has ultimately become one of the finest examples of poetic autobiography ever written; a fascinating examination of the self that also presents a comprehensive view of the poet's own creative vision.

From the Back Cover

The great Romantic poem of human consciousness, The Prelude takes as its theme 'the growth of a poet's mind'. In its search for the origins of the adult personality, The Prelude takes the reader back to the formative moments of childhood and youth: the baby at the breast, the boy ranging over the Cumbrian fells, the revolutionary undergraduate. In many ways it can be seen as the first modern poem, challenging Milton in its redefinition of epic, as Milton challenged Homer and Virgil. This new Penguin English Poets edition of The Prelude contains the brief first draft, Was It for This, composed in 1798; The Prelude in two books completed in 1799; and The Prelude in its 1805 and 1850 versions, printed here in parallel texts. The editor provides an invaluable introduction to the texts and fuller, more detailed notes than in any previous edition, as well as significant textual variants and a biographical table of dates.