The Prelude is now seen as a central text in the Wordsworth corpus. This Guide identifies and gathers significant critical perspectives, interpretations and debates connected with the poem, contextualising and explaining criticism from the Victorian period right through to the present day.

TIM MILNES is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

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.