Editing Kubla Khan (section)

=== Date of composition ===
[[File:Samuel Taylor Coleridge at age 42.jpg|thumb|right|Coleridge, 1814]]
"Kubla Khan" was likely written in October 1797, though the precise date and circumstances of the first composition of "Kubla Khan" are slightly ambiguous, due to limited direct evidence. Coleridge usually dated his poems, but did not date "Kubla Khan",<ref>Holmes 1989 p. 165</ref> and did not mention the poem directly in letters to his friends.

Coleridge's descriptions of the poem's composition attribute it to 1797. In a manuscript in Coleridge's handwriting (known as the [[Crewe manuscript]]), a note by Coleridge says that it was composed "in the fall of the year, 1797."<ref name=":0">{{cite web |url = https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/manuscript-of-s-t-coleridges-kubla-khan |title=Manuscript of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'|website=British Library|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190617140410/https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/manuscript-of-s-t-coleridges-kubla-khan|archive-date=17 June 2019|access-date=January 25, 2020}}</ref><ref>Holmes 1989 qtd. p. 162</ref> In the preface to the first published edition of the poem, in 1816, Coleridge says that it was composed during an extended stay he had made in [[Somerset]] during "the summer of the year 1797."<ref name=":1">Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ''Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep'', 2nd edition, William Bulmer, London, 1816. Reproduced in ''The Complete Poems'', ed. William Keach, Penguin Books, 2004.</ref> On 14 October 1797, Coleridge wrote a letter to [[John Thelwall]] which, although it does not directly mention "Kubla Khan", expresses many of the same feelings as in the poem,{{NoteTag|"I should much wish, like the Indian Vishna, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotos, & wake once in a million years for a few minutes – just to know I was going to sleep a million years more...I can ''at times'' feel strong the beauties, you describe, in themselves, & for themselves – but more frequently ''all things'' appear little – all the knowledge, that can be acquired, child's play – the universe itself – what but an immense heap of ''little'' things?...My mind feels as if it ached to behold & know something ''great'' – something ''one'' & ''indivisible'' – and it is only in the faith of this that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense of sublimity or majesty!"<ref>Holmes 1989 qtd p. 167</ref>}} suggesting that these themes were on his mind.<ref name=":2">Holmes 1989 pp. 166–167</ref> All of these details have led to the consensus of an October 1797 composition date.

A May 1798 composition date is sometimes proposed because the first written mention of the poem is in Dorothy Wordsworth's journal of October 1798, where she mentions "carrying ''Kubla'' to a fountain".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kelleher |first=Hilton | title=The Kubla Khan Manuscript and Its First Collector | journal=The British Library Journal | date=1994 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/42554389. | volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=184–198 |jstor=42554389 | access-date=2024-07-08}}</ref> October 1799 has also been suggested because by then Coleridge would have been able to read [[Robert Southey]]'s ''Thalaba the Destroyer'', a work which drew on the same sources as "Kubla Khan". At both time periods, Coleridge was again in the area of Ash Farm, near [[Culbone Church]], where Coleridge consistently described composing the poem. However, the October 1797 composition date is more widely accepted.{{cn |reason=Wide acceptance is very difficult to verify and may change over time |date=July 2024}}