List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments x Abbreviations and Texts xii Foreword: "The Prelude": A Poem of My Own Life? xvii Part I Early Years 1 1 Versions of Home: 1770-83 3 2 Hawkshead and Esthwaite: 1783-7 18 3 Cambridge: 1787-90 37 4 To the Alps: and What Followed: 1790-1 53 5 Annette Vallon, Michel de Beaupuy, and the Bishop of Llandaff: 1791-3 69 Part II Writer 91 6 Salisbury Plain and its Consequences: 1793-5 93 7 Racedown: 1795-7 113 8 Coleridge and Alfoxton: 1797-8 135 9 Lyrical Ballads : 1798 157 10 Hamburg to the Harz: 1798 173 11 Writing in Goslar: 1798-9 183 12 Sockburn to Grasmere: 1799-1800 198 Part III Town-End 213 13 "Home at Grasmere," the "Ode," "Michael": 1800-1 215 14 Hurting: 1800-1 241 15 Marrying: 1801-2 249 16 Grasmere to Calais and on to Gallow Hill: 1802 265 17 Marriage, First Child, and the Trip to Scotland: 1802-3 284 18 "The Prelude" I: 1804 303 19 "The Prelude" II: 1804-5 315 20 "Elegiac Stanzas," Poems, in Two Volumes : 1806-7 328 Part IV The Light of Common Day 341 21 "The Recluse" and The Convention of Cintra : 1808-9 343 22 Loss and Grief: 1809-12 356 23 Stamp-officer and Poet of The Excursion : 1812-14 368 24 "What though it be past": 1814 387 Part V Sketches of Late Years 397 25 Poetry, Family, and Polemic: 1815-18 399 26 Peter Bell and "the ghosts of what they were": 1819-26 407 27 "The Recluse" and "The Prelude": 1827-33 418 28 The Past Enshrined: 1834-42 429 29 No Resting Place: 1843-50 439 Afterword 447 Bibliography 451 Index 457.