page_title: Kubla Khan
section_title: Publication
hierarchical_section_title: Kubla Khan / Composition and publication / Publication
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of the 1816 collection of poems.
context_page_description: Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.
  The poem is vastly different in style from other poems written by Coleridge. The first stanza of the poem describes Khan's pleasure dome built alongside a sacred river fed by a powerful fountain. The second stanza of the poem is the narrator's response to the power and effects of an Abyssinian maid's song, which enraptures him but leaves him unable to act on her inspiration unless he could hear her once again.
context_section_description: After its composition, Coleridge periodically read the poem to friends, as to the Wordsworths in 1798, but did not seek to publish it. The poem was set aside until 1815 when Coleridge compiled manuscripts of his poems for a collection titled Sibylline Leaves. It did not feature in that volume, but Coleridge did read the poem to Lord Byron on 10 April 1816.
  Byron persuaded Coleridge to publish the poem, and on 12 April 1816, a contract was drawn up with the publisher John Murray for 80 pounds. The Preface of Kubla Khan explained that it was printed "at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and as far as the author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits." Coleridge's wife discouraged the publication, and Charles Lamb, a poet and friend of Coleridge, expressed mixed feelings, worrying that the printed version of the poem couldn't capture the power of the recited version.
  Kubla Khan was published with Christabel and "The Pains of Sleep" on 25 May 1816.  Coleridge included "A Fragment" as a subtitle Kubla Khan to defend against criticism of the poem's incomplete nature. The original published version of the work was separated into 2 stanzas, with the first ending at line 30. The poem was printed four times in Coleridge's life, with the final printing in his Poetical Works of 1834. In the final work, Coleridge added the expanded subtitle "Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment". Printed with Kubla Khan was a preface that claimed a dream provided Coleridge the lines. In some later anthologies of Coleridge's poetry, the preface is dropped along with the subtitle denoting its fragmentary and dream nature. Sometimes, the preface is included in modern editions but lacks both the first and final paragraphs.
caption: Title page of Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep (1816)
exif: {}