The Prelude is William Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem. Commenced in 1798, and periodically expanded and revised throughout Wordsworth's life, it was published in 1850 after the poet's death.

This Reader's Guide:

• begins with a discussion of the complex textual history of The Prelude
• covers the full range of critical responses surrounding the poem, from the first Victorian reviewers to Modernist polemicists, and from the 'theory wars' of the 1970s and 1980s to the emergence of recent 'green' criticism
• identifies and gathers significant critical perspectives, interpretations and debates connected with the work, contextualising and explaining the material under discussion.

Comprehensive and approachable, this is an invaluable introduction to a widely-studied work which has come to assume a central place in Wordsworth's literary output.

Introduction
In the Cathedral Ruins: The Prelude from Conception to Criticism
Revaluations: The Early Twentieth Century
Style, Philosophy, and Phenomenology: From the 1950s to the 1970s
Writing the Self: Deconstruction, Feminism and Psychoanalysis from the 1970s to the 1990s 
Spots of Time: The New Historicism in the 1980s and 1990s
The Prelude and the Present
Conclusion: The Prelude Revisited
Notes
Bibliography
Index

TIM MILNES is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He has published widely on the English Romantic poets and essayists, and his previous publications include Knowledge and Indifference in English Romantic Prose (2003).