William Wordsworth, Stephen Parrish (Editor)
"The Prelude", 1798-1799.
Cornell University Press, 1977. The Cornell Wordsworth. Author-signed first edition. 0801408547 ix/313 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.75", is bound in green cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine and insignia of series blind stamped on front cover. Book is like new.  Dust jacket displays sunning to spine and is otherwise in fine condition. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
Inscription by Stephen Parrish (1921-2012), noted Wordsworth scholar and general editor of the "Cornell Wordsworth", appears on front flyleaf reads "for Don Eddy / with the compliments of / Gen Ed Parrish / Dec '76".
"The second volume in The Cornell Wordsworth series, this book presents the earliest version of Wordworth's great autobiographical poem, "The Prelude," published posthumously in 1850. Wordsworth began this version in 1798 and completed it in two Parts the following year. It brings the poet's narrative account of the growth of his own mind up to his seventeenth year and his departure for Cambridge. Concentrated, self-contained, and rounded off with a formal and tender farewell to Coleridge, it contains some of the most celebrated passages of "The Prelude" later moved to other sections of the longer versions in thirteen and fourteen Books.
An edited reading text of the poem is accompanied by transcriptions of manuscripts for which drafts and fair copies survive, and the most complex and important of these manuscripts are also reproduced photographically. Professor Parrish's substantial introduction traces in full the origins and growth of the poem."