William Wordsworth's The Prelude A Casebook

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.

Stephen Gill is University Professor of English at Oxford University and the author of William Wordsworth: A Life and Wordsworth and the Victorians (both OUP).