15. The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Wordsworth’s blank-verse epic The Prelude remained unpublished during his lifetime and was known to family and friends simply as ‘the poem to Coleridge’. After his death in 1850 it was published and given its familiar name by his wife, Mary. There's rather a sad story behind her choice of title. Throughout his life Wordsworth worked on an immense philosophical poem called The Recluse, which was to be the 19th century’s answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. The Prelude was merely its introduction. But despite sweating mightily over it, Wordsworth only completed one section of The Recluse (published as The Excursion in 1814); The Prelude, having grown during composition to a weighty 14 books, constantly siphoned off its best material. The Recluse was left not only unwritten, but unwriteable.

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