diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index f9671af6c..cc53820d8 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -65,6 +65,7 @@ Bugs fixed
 * #2164: Fix wrong check for pdftex inside sphinx.sty (for graphicx package option).
 * #2165, #2218: Remove faulty and non-need conditional from sphinx.sty.
 * Fix broken LaTeX code is generated if unknown language is given
+* #1944: Fix rst_prolog breaks file-wide metadata
 
 Documentation
 -------------
diff --git a/sphinx/environment.py b/sphinx/environment.py
index f919c0048..ad07b642a 100644
--- a/sphinx/environment.py
+++ b/sphinx/environment.py
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ from docutils.frontend import OptionParser
 
 from sphinx import addnodes
 from sphinx.util import url_re, get_matching_docs, docname_join, split_into, \
-    FilenameUniqDict, get_figtype, import_object, split_index_msg
+    FilenameUniqDict, get_figtype, import_object, split_index_msg, split_docinfo
 from sphinx.util.nodes import clean_astext, make_refnode, WarningStream, is_translatable
 from sphinx.util.osutil import SEP, getcwd, fs_encoding
 from sphinx.util.i18n import find_catalog_files
@@ -160,11 +160,12 @@ class SphinxFileInput(FileInput):
             arg = [data]
             self.app.emit('source-read', self.env.docname, arg)
             data = arg[0]
+        docinfo, data = split_docinfo(data)
         if self.env.config.rst_epilog:
             data = data + '\n' + self.env.config.rst_epilog + '\n'
         if self.env.config.rst_prolog:
             data = self.env.config.rst_prolog + '\n' + data
-        return data
+        return docinfo + data
 
 
 class BuildEnvironment:
diff --git a/sphinx/util/__init__.py b/sphinx/util/__init__.py
index 5e5c8ac9e..b3b065f8e 100644
--- a/sphinx/util/__init__.py
+++ b/sphinx/util/__init__.py
@@ -532,3 +532,12 @@ def encode_uri(uri):
                  for (q, v) in parse_qsl(split[3]))
     split[3] = urlencode(query).decode('ascii')
     return urlunsplit(split)
+
+
+def split_docinfo(text):
+    docinfo_re = re.compile('\A((?:\s*:\w+:.*?\n)+)', re.M)
+    result = docinfo_re.split(text, 1)
+    if len(result) == 1:
+        return '', result[0]
+    else:
+        return result[1:]
diff --git a/tests/test_util.py b/tests/test_util.py
index 23c4ad1ca..dbecfb1a2 100644
--- a/tests/test_util.py
+++ b/tests/test_util.py
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
     :copyright: Copyright 2007-2016 by the Sphinx team, see AUTHORS.
     :license: BSD, see LICENSE for details.
 """
-from sphinx.util import encode_uri
+from sphinx.util import encode_uri, split_docinfo
 
 
 def test_encode_uri():
@@ -24,3 +24,20 @@ def test_encode_uri():
     uri = (u'https://github.com/search?utf8=✓&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+is%3A'
            u'sprint-friendly+user%3Ajupyter&type=Issues&ref=searchresults')
     assert expected, encode_uri(uri)
+
+
+def test_splitdocinfo():
+    source = "Hello world.\n"
+    docinfo, content = split_docinfo(source)
+    assert docinfo == ''
+    assert content == 'Hello world.\n'
+
+    source = ":orphan:\n\nHello world.\n"
+    docinfo, content = split_docinfo(source)
+    assert docinfo == ':orphan:\n'
+    assert content == '\nHello world.\n'
+
+    source = ":author: Georg Brandl\n:title: Manual of Sphinx\n\nHello world.\n"
+    docinfo, content = split_docinfo(source)
+    assert docinfo == ':author: Georg Brandl\n:title: Manual of Sphinx\n'
+    assert content == '\nHello world.\n'