A fourteen-volume epic, The Prelude is William Wordsworth's account of his own life and growth as a poet, published in various editions between 1799 and 1850. Intended to be the forerunner to another epic work entitled The Recluse, this work is today considered to be William Wordsworth's masterpiece and one of the great works of the Romantic movement. While it is oriented around recounting Wordsworth's own life, it engages closely with both philosophical themes important to the Romantic movement and with the political issues of the era. Chief among its thematic concerns is the power and importance of the natural world. This theme is linked to several others: the desire to produce artistic works as lasting as nature itself, and the presence of God in nature. Like much Romantic writing, The Prelude also expresses impatience with Enlightenment-era faith in reason over emotion, arguing that true reason is based in imagination rather than cool detachment. This poem also explores issues of political justice and tyranny, in particular regarding the French Revolution.
The Prelude has at many times been used as a detailed historical account of Wordsworth's life and artistic evolution, but it is also a manifesto of the Romantic movement from a number of different angles—the rejection of Enlightenment attitudes, the defense of nature in the face of industrialization, the importance of transcendence and emotion, the influence of childhood throughout life, and the moral necessity of radical politics. At the same time, it offers insight into some of Wordsworth's peculiarities even within the movement, especially his turn towards political conservatism later in life. At the same time, it articulates the particularly Wordsworthian idea that life and art are essentially cyclical: the speaker's evolution involves not a total transformation from his childhood self, but rather an effortful return to his youthful passions and sensitivities.
Wordsworth began writing The Prelude in 1798 and published the work in three main editions. The first, in 1799, contained what would later be the first several books of the complete work. In 1805, Wordsworth published a more recognizably complete edition—the one most commonly read to this day. He continued to revise it over the following decades. A final edition was published posthumously in 1850. This guide is primarily concerned with analyzing the 1805 edition, although the 1850 revision is referenced, in particular when it offers a particularly revealing glimpse at Wordsworth's stylistic or political evolution over the first half of the nineteenth century. The Prelude is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and its style is expressive and impassioned. It explores the poet's failures and regrets in as much detail as his triumphs, and veers between relatively straightforward autobiography and abstract meditations on love, God, nature, justice, and art. It is also largely addressed to Wordsworth's contemporary and collaborator Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of works such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
