The Prelude: The Four Texts (1798, 1799, 1805, 1850)--A Parallel Text (Penguin Classics)

This book is a roller-coater of litereral passages that keep you on the edge of your chair. It's a real page turner.

Cant get enough of Wordsworth. The Prelude, Michael, Tintern Abbey... A world lit only by fire. And people walked. Everywhere

As is becoming depressingly evident, Penguin publishers show utter contempt for the Kindle. This is the third defective Penguin e-book that I have purchased for the Kindle, and it is clear that nobody has bothered to proof-read or format these works properly. Font sizes change randomly; words, sometimes 5 at a time, run into each other; and notes are often intrusive in the poetic texts, altering the line lengths. This edition of the Prelude, however, is the worst: as it is a parallel text edition, one would expect to be able to distinguish between the two versions, but no, it is as if it is one massive poem, with nothing to orient you to the differences except when the occasional line number recurs. Hopefully Oxford Classics will bring out more Kindle editions, as they seem to care about their readership.Also avoid the Penguin versions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

This book was a wonderful addition to my library. The content is well-chosen and enjoyable to read. I would suggest this for anyone sick of holding 1200 page editions!

The Prelude is William Wordsworth's masterpiece and one of the greatest poems of all-time. It began as a relatively short, two part work finished in 1799 but was expanded to fourteen books by 1805. Wordsworth labored over it until 1839, polishing, making a few additions based on later events, and altering some of his more radical statements about the divinity of nature and mind to fit his increasing religious conservatism. He published several excerpts at various times, but the whole was not released - indeed, hardly even known - until shortly after his 1850 death. The edition has all three versions plus an early draft, giving readers the full experience.The Prelude is now seen as his crowning achievement, at once his art's prelude and culmination. The work is of course an epic and highly influenced by prior ones from Spenser and Milton, but like Wordsworth's other major early work, it is ground-breakingly original. The subtitle describes it succinctly: "Growth of a Poet's Mind." After deciding to be a poet, Wordsworth surveyed his life to find the events, thoughts, and feelings qualifying him for the role, and this is the result. Though in verse, it gives an overview of his life to that point much like a traditional autobiography, but his real focus is internal. Wordsworth details what molded his mind - and perhaps more importantly, his heart - for poetry. Anyone curious about his life will naturally find it invaluable, and it is also of great value to those interested in the era. Wordsworth saw many important events, including the French Revolution nearly at first hand, and relates them vividly; this is an excellent primary source for both historians and biographers. Perhaps more notably, and at least more unusually, we also get a profoundly lifelike, detailed glimpse of rural England in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Everything from speech to landscape is on display, and we get a fascinating glimpse of the awe felt by someone from such a place first beholding London, France, and the Alps. All this gives substantial value to the poem even for non-fans. However, intriguing and worthy as all this is, the real treasure is indeed watching the growth of Wordsworth's mind. Whether we care about or agree with him is irrelevant; the poem is profoundly searching, exploring the spiritual and philosophical questions haunting all intelligent people. The honesty, insight, and sheer reach are mesmerizing. We feel for and with Wordsworth as he struggles with identity and life because it is our struggle; very few works, especially in poetry, are as moving and thought-provoking at the same time. The poetry itself is also top-notch; perfectly wrought and eminently quotable, this blank verse stands with Shakespeare's and Milton's as the greatest in English. This is essential for anyone even remotely interested in English poetry.

I find it completely despicable that Penguin Classics choose to publish in Kindle format without reviewing how the layout of the physical book edition works when transferred to Kindle. It it structured with the 1805 edition and 1850 edition as parallel texts, which is great with the physical book, as you can compare the two texts, and if you only wish to read one version, you simply read either the right-side pages or the left-side. However, the Kindle format does not make it clear when you go from one page to the next, so it is extremely difficult to navigate the text.I am very disappointed by this huge mistake, as the Penguin edition of The Prelude is very good and often used by students. These are the worst 16 $ I have ever spent. A complete waste of money and a mockery of the customers.

Disclaimer: This review is specific to the Penguin digital edition for the Kindle, which offers a side-by-side comparison of the texts from two different editions of THE PRELUDE. Sounds like a lovely idea, but apparently digital reading technology isn't quite up to the task. The Kindle reading app, at least on my Asus Transformer tablet, doesn't know how to handle the dual texts, so turning pages becomes a big ordeal, whether you read vertically (1-page spread) or horizontally (2-page spread). The book's only a buck, so if you're desperate, hop to... but prepared to be frustrated when you actually get the file open.

I bought this text on my kindle because I specifically needed the 1805 version of The Prelude for a class. The formatting of the book does not translate at all on the kindle. The 1805 version is supposed to be presented side by side with another version but the two versions run into each other on the page. Even with the line numbers it is very hard to distinguish where one version starts and the other begins. Also, it was $13 on the bookstore via my kindle, but one Amazon it is priced at $1. Ripoff.

This 'parallel text' version is utterly hopeless on a kindle (and the app for Mac). Apart from on the first pages of the 1805 and 1850 texts, you have no way of knowing which text you are in! Forget comparing texts, you don't even have a way to read one of them. I suspect no human being who cares has thought about this at all. 9 years after similar complaints, nothing has been done. Disgraceful.

I bought this book for a Year 11 pupil that I had supported for 6 years. She, over time developed a real love for poetry and this was a gift to expand her mind and use later on in life.

Anyone who shares my belief that The Prelude is the best long poem in English should buy this text. It replaces the two-version Prelude published earlier by Penguin. With this version, and the two volume complete shorter poems (also in Penguin Classics), a reader can now own everything Wordsworth wrote in verse. This 1995 edition is the first, to my knowledge, to include the short first draft with its title, "Was It For This." This is followed by the Two-Part Prelude of 1799. The 1805 and 1850 versions are then printed as a parallel text, with the 1805 text on the left-hand page, and the 1850 text on the right. This means you can compare the versions as you read the poem, or simply select one. Jonathan Wordsworth's introduction and notes are excellent. In his introduction, he demonstrates how Wordsworth's revisions of the poem between 1805 and 1850, often leads to padding. The notes favour the 1805 version, but also refer to the longer 1850 text when changes made by Wordsworth are of interest.. Occasionally, Wordsworth did improve some lines, but most readers now prefer his 1805 Prelude. This is an invaluable volume for lovers of English Romantic poetry. The paperback edition is a handsome one with an attractive detail from Cloud Study, painted by the Norwegian artist Johan Christian Dahl, on the front cover.

"Das" Werk der englischen Romantik in einer sehr übersichtlichen Ausgabe: die 4 Versionen des Mammut-Gedichtes. Die Texte von 1805 und 1850 sind sich gegenübergestellt, sodass man gut die Abweichungen/Ergänzungen sieht. Dazu eine Introduction sowie eine Chronologie von Wordsworth's Leben und Werken.

Sadly disappointed to find that the two main versions of The Prelude are unreadable on the kindle. They are merged and the breaks between the two versions are not navigable except by paging down until you find the next instance of the version you are reading. Until there is a new digital format buy the book. Amazon, to whom I am grateful, have refunded the purchase.I wrote to Penguin two and a half weeks ago questioning the formatting, but have had no response; a pity I think.