Editing Kubla Khan (section)

=== Composition in a dream ===
In September 1797, Coleridge lived in [[Nether Stowey]] in the southwest of England and spent much of his time walking through the nearby [[Quantock Hills]] with his fellow poet [[William Wordsworth]] and Wordsworth's sister [[Dorothy Wordsworth|Dorothy]]<ref name="Holmes 1989 pp. 161-162">Holmes 1989 pp. 161–162</ref> (his route today is memorialised as the "[[Coleridge Way]]").<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.somerset-rural-renaissance.co.uk/coleridge-way.html|title=The Coleridge Way|year=2007|publisher=Somerset Rural Renaissance|access-date=2 July 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081123055049/http://www.somerset-rural-renaissance.co.uk/coleridge-way.html|archive-date=23 November 2008|url-status=dead}}</ref> Some time between 9 and 14 October 1797, when Coleridge says he had completed the tragedy ''Osorio'', he left Stowey for [[Lynton]]. On his return journey, he became sick and rested at Ash Farm, located near Culbone Church and one of the few places to seek shelter on his route.<ref name="Holmes 1989 pp. 161-162" /> There, he had a dream which inspired the poem.

[[File:KublaKhan.jpeg|thumb|right|The [[Crewe manuscript]], handwritten by Coleridge himself some time before the poem was published in 1816]]

Coleridge described the circumstances of his dream and the poem in two places: on a manuscript copy written some time before 1816, and in the preface to the printed version of the poem published in 1816. The manuscript states: "This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium taken to check a dysentry, at a Farm House between [[Porlock]] & Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church." The printed preface describes his location as "a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the [[Exmoor]] confines of Somerset and Devonshire," and embellishes the events into a narrative which has sometimes been seen as part of the poem itself.

According to the extended preface narrative, Coleridge was reading ''Purchas his Pilgrimes'' by [[Samuel Purchas]], and fell asleep after reading about [[Kublai Khan]]. Then, he says, he "continued for about three hours in a profound sleep... during which time he had the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines ... On Awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved."<ref name="Holmes qtd. p. 435">Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 435</ref> The passage continues with a famous account of an interruption:<ref name="Holmes 1998 p. 435">Holmes 1998 p. 435</ref> "At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock... and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away."<ref name="Holmes qtd. p. 435" /> The "[[person on business from Porlock]]" later became a term to describe interrupted genius. When [[John Livingston Lowes]] taught the poem, he told his students "If there is any man in the history of literature who should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, it is the man on business from Porlock."<ref>Perkins 2010 qtd. p. 39</ref>

There are some problems with Coleridge's account, especially the claim to have a copy of Purchas with him. It was a rare book, unlikely to be at a "lonely farmhouse", nor would an individual carry it on a journey; the folio was heavy and almost 1,000 pages in size.<ref>Fruman 1971 p. 337</ref> It is possible that the words of Purchas were merely remembered by Coleridge and that the depiction of immediately reading the work before falling asleep was to suggest that the subject came to him accidentally.<ref>Bate 1968 pp. 75–76</ref> Critics have also noted that unlike the manuscript, which says he had taken two grains of opium, the printed version of this story says only that "In consequence of a slight indisposition, an [[anodyne]] had been prescribed." The image of himself that Coleridge provides is of a dreamer who reads works of lore and not as an opium addict. Instead, the effects of the opium, as described, are intended to suggest that he was not used to its effects.<ref name="Perkins p. 39">Perkins 2010 p. 39</ref>

According to some critics, the second stanza of the poem, forming a conclusion, was composed at a later date and was possibly disconnected from the original dream.<ref>Perkins 2010 pp. 40–44</ref>