Dreaming of Xanadu: Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”

On May 25,1816, a collection of poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was published by John Murray in London, including "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel". Kubla Khan had been written twenty years earlier. It was published in 1816 at the urging of Lord Byron. From the article:

"Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that he wrote “Kubla Khan” in the fall of 1797, but it was not published until he read it to George Gordon, Lord Byron in 1816, when Byron insisted that it go into print immediately. It is a powerful, legendary and mysterious poem, composed during an opium dream, admittedly a fragment. In the prefatory note published with the poem, Coleridge claimed he wrote several hundred lines during his reverie, but was not able to finish writing out the poem when he woke because his frenzied writing was interrupted"