What a great reading challenge, Thomas! I am excited you will be reading George MacDonald this year. I think you will really like his writing. I haven't read Phantastes yet, so I will have to add that to my 2024 reading list!
When you get to The Prelude, you will discover that there are two main version, the 1805 and the 1850. My father was a Wordsworth scholar and a great advocate of the 1850 Prelude. The critical consensus at the time favored the 1805 because it is more left wing, in the spirit of the French Revolution, while the 1850 is more conservative. My father's case for the 1850 was not based on its politics but on the quality of its poetry. I have no information on which version Lewis would have read, though I suspect that the 1850 would have been the default version at the time, before ambitious scholars dug up the earlier version. You might want to check into this if you want to be scrupulous about it. If you just want the better poetry, though, go for the 1850.
What a great reading challenge, Thomas! I am excited you will be reading George MacDonald this year. I think you will really like his writing. I haven't read Phantastes yet, so I will have to add that to my 2024 reading list!
When you get to The Prelude, you will discover that there are two main version, the 1805 and the 1850. My father was a Wordsworth scholar and a great advocate of the 1850 Prelude. The critical consensus at the time favored the 1805 because it is more left wing, in the spirit of the French Revolution, while the 1850 is more conservative. My father's case for the 1850 was not based on its politics but on the quality of its poetry. I have no information on which version Lewis would have read, though I suspect that the 1850 would have been the default version at the time, before ambitious scholars dug up the earlier version. You might want to check into this if you want to be scrupulous about it. If you just want the better poetry, though, go for the 1850.