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The work is a poetic reflection on Wordsworth's own sense of his poetic vocation as it developed over the course of his life in 14 books. It was intended to be the prologue to a long three-part philosophical poem Wordsworth planned to call ''The Recluse''. Though Wordsworth planned this project when he was in his late 20s, he went to his grave at 80 years old having published only the second part ('' The Excursion ''), and leaving no more than fragments of the rest. It was published after Wordsworth's death in 1850 by Wordsworth's widow Mary, who chose to name it ''The Prelude''. The title was meant to suggest that it was written as the introduction to a longer work, and that it was one of the poet's earlier poems rather than his last. ''The Prelude'' is by common consent the poet's greatest work; and it is noteworthy that Wordsworth's fame in his lifetime as the architect of Romantic Conservatism was actually achieved without it. The Fourteen Books of this spiritual autobiography holds Wordsworth's persistent metaphor that life is a circular journey whose end is "to arrive where we started / And know that place for the first time" (Little Gidding, lines 241-42). Wordsworth's Prelude opens with a literal journey whose chose 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 climatic ascent of Mount Snowdon. In the course of the poem, such literal journeys become the metaphorical vehicle for a spiritual journey -- the quest in the poet's memory. Although the episodes of the Prelude are recognizable events from Wordsworth's life, they are interpreted in retrospect, reordered in sequence, retold as dramas involving the interaction between the mind and nature and between the creative imagination and the force of history. Through the journeys Wordsworth tries to reconstitute the grounds of hope in a dark time of post-revolutionary reaction and despair.¹ ¹From The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition 2006 EXTERNAL LINK
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