The prelude

The Prelude, Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem, is crucial to our understanding of his life and poetry. Written between 1798 and 1805, the text was intensively revised in Wordsworth's later years. This volume contains the original version of 1805, which was read to Coleridge. The poem was first published in 1850, after the poet's death, and is available in Wordsworth's Poetical Works. To facilitate comparison, line numbers of the 1850 text have been placed in square brackets on the right-hand side of the page.