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The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem is an autobiography poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Intended as the introduction to the more philosophical poem The Recluse, which Wordsworth never finished, The Prelude is an extremely personal work and reveals many details of Wordsworth's life.
Wordsworth began The Prelude in 1798, at the age of 28, and continued to work on it throughout his life. He never gave it a title, but called it the "Poem (title not yet fixed upon) to Coleridge" in his letters to his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. The poem was unknown to the general public until the final version was published three months after Wordsworth's death in 1850. Its present title was given to it by his widow Mary.
The Prelude was the product of a lifetime: for the last part of his life Wordsworth had been "polishing the style and qualifying some of its radical statements about the divine sufficiency of the human mind in its communion with nature". The Norton Anthology of English Literature 323.
Wordsworth initially planned to write this work together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, their joint intent being to surpass John Milton's Paradise Lost. Table Talk II.70–71; IG3 If The Recluse had been completed, it would have been about three times as long as Paradise Lost (33,000 lines versus 10,500). Wordsworth often commented in his letters that he was plagued with agony because he had failed to finish the work. In his introduction to the 1850 version, Wordsworth explains that the original idea, inspired by his "dear friend" Coleridge, was "to compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled the Recluse; as having for its principal subject, the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement". The Poems of William Wordsworth 237.
Coleridge's inspiration and interest is evident in his letters. For instance, in 1799 he wrote to Wordsworth: "I am anxiously eager to have you steadily employed on 'The Recluse'... I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost Epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophies. It would do great good, and might form a Part of 'The Recluse'." (STC to WW, Sept. 1799).
Wordsworth pays tribute to Coleridge in his introduction to the edition of 1850: "work is addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted."
This spiritual autobiography evolves out of Wordsworth's "persistent metaphor that a circular journey whose end is 'to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time' (T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, lines 241-42). The Prelude opens with a literal journey during 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 within the poet's memory ...".
Large selection of excerpts from the 1805 Prelude
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