Publication of Kubla Khan

Date: May 25, 1816 • Location: Beijing, China

The poems Kubla Khan and Christabel by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge were published.

Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." 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 capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by 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 on business from Porlock". The poem could, according to Coleridge, 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 He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.