Myself and Some Other Being: Wordsworth and the Life Writing

Note on Editions

ix ix Note on Editions F or ease of reference, I cite the 2010 paperback se‑ lection of Wordsworth’s poems edited by Stephen Gill. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations of Wordsworth’s poetry and prose refer to this edition : William Wordsworth (21st-­ Century Oxford Authors), edited by Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010), which includes the thirteen-­ book version of The Prelude, the version to which I most often refer. When I cite line numbers for poetry, I also provide page numbers in parentheses. Keeping the different versions of The Prelude straight is difficult, especially since Wordsworth did not entitle any of them “The Prelude.” In addition to the published version of 1850, three complete versions exist in manuscript. They are all The Prelude. Since doubt lingers over the authoritative status of the posthumously published text, scholars in recent decades have taken advantageof being able to read and study the three manuscript versions that, presumably, better reflect the author’s intentions for the work at three different stages. The first version is untitled but exists in two parts identified as such by Wordsworth.This short draft is known as the two-­part Prelude of 1798–1799 and is often treated as a complete work, although it may be only an aborted attempt at a longer work. Three years later, Wordsworth began expanding the poem; the thirteen-­book Prelude, as it is known, was completed in 1805 and was preserved in faircopies made in 1805–1806. First published in 1926, this version has a working title, “Poem Title not yet fixed upon by William Wordsworth Addressed to S. T. Coleridge,” and is the preferred version because it was written during what experts have called “the Great Decade,” 1798–1807, when Wordsworth wrote all of the poems that have been the most popular since early in the twentieth century. Some critics maintain, however, that the fourteen-­ book Prelude, published in 1850, x Note on Editions is an improved poem. All three are available in the Norton Critical Edition, The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850, ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill (Norton, 1979). Extensive details and a full critical apparatus for each version may be found in the Cornell Wordsworth edition: ThePrelude,1798–1799, ed. by Stephen Parrish (Cornell University Press, 1977); The Thirteen-­ Book Prelude, 2 vols., ed. by Mark L. Reed (Cornell University Press, 1991); and The Fourteen-­Book Prelude, ed. by W. J. B. Owen (Cornell University Press, 1985). Myself & Some Other Being ...