It is the result of an intense period of sorting, assimilation and copying of verses involving William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth in February and March of Significantly, it is a gift of love from the Dove Cottage household to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, their close friend and fellow poet, to be his companion during his forthcoming time in the Mediterranean. This manuscript embodies the friendship of William, Dorothy and Coleridge which began nine years earlier in South West England.
After the Wordsworths moved to Dove Cottage in , Coleridge moved himself and his family to live nearby, settling in Keswick, thirteen miles further north of Grasmere. In late , Coleridge, suffering severe ill health caused largely by an addiction to opium, decided upon a period living in the Mediterranean in search of better health.
Coleridge left Dove Cottage on 14 th January after a three week stay, during which time Wordsworth had read him the two-book Prelude. One stanza on one leaf, and another on another. So, as a safety measure, a second copy was made to be kept at Dove Cottage.
The poems were copied onto stitched bifolia, using a bird feather quill and home-made ink, probably on the table in the sitting room of Dove Cottage. After the last packet had been sent to Coleridge, Wordsworth then wrote a subsequent letter and typically of Wordsworth containing suggestions for revisions to the lines that he had only just sent. Significantly, it marks a turning point in the development of The Prelude. Coleridge left England for the Mediterranean on 9th April, sailing on The Speedwell, part of a thirty-five-ship convoy.
As Dorothy had hoped, the pages and lines of poetry did provide a companion for Coleridge: as he lay in his cabin, on a night that was for once a little calmer, he read the poem that the circle knew as the Poem to Coleridge, The Prelude. The return journey in was, by all accounts like the outward journey , a terrible ordeal for Coleridge.
