The Prelude, William Wordsworth's masterful autobiographical work composed in blank verse, is generally considered the poem at the heart of the Romantic movement and one of the great poems in the English language. In this fully illustrated and annotated edition, the work receives the treatment it deserves. Inspired by his dear friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poem charts the development of the author's mind from childhood to his experiences in Cambridge, London, the Alps, and France, touching on subjects ranging from leisure to literature, nature to imagination, and everything in between.

A meditation on the self, this work still stands as a masterpiece of English literature and is here complemented and enhanced by two hundred contemporaneous color plates that illuminate the text. Scrupulously selected and newly re-edited from the definitive manuscripts in existence, the marginal notes and glosses provide an extra touch that makes this a truly enlightening reading experience.

Helen Vendler's afterword is an appreciation of the poem which also puts in it context for American readers.