"Kubla Khan: A Vision"
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of the University of Virginia

Sources

London : John Murray, 1816"Kubla Khan" was first published in 1816, in a volume containing three poems by Coleridge: this one, "Cristabel" and "The Pains of Sleep." We are reproducing the text of that first printing, which Coleridge did not alter much afterwards. Coleridge's claim that the poem was originally written 1798 seems entirely plausible, but is impossible to prove. We do know that the "poet of great and deserved celebrity" mentioned in Coleridge's prefatory note was Byron, who heard Coleridge recite the poem in 1815 or 1816, urged him to publish it, and probably helped him get the volume of poems published with the prestigious London publisher John Murray, who was Byron's publisher as well. Our page images are from the Google Books version of the first edition.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Kubla Khan: A Vision". Cristabel, Kubla Khan: A Vision, The Pains of Sleep, John Murray, 1816 , 51-58 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Coleridge/coleridge-kubla. Accessed: 2025-01-15T08:51:24.598Z