Which Romantic poet wrote 'Kubla Khan'?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “Kubla Khan,” one of the best-known visionary poems of English Romanticism. The poem’s full title is “Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment.”

Coleridge dated the poem’s composition to 1797, when he was staying in Somerset. In his famous preface, he claimed that its imagery came to him in an opium-influenced dream after reading about Xanadu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan, in Samuel Purchas’s travel writing. He said that an interruption by “a person on business from Porlock” prevented him from recording the poem in full.

The poem describes Kubla Khan’s pleasure-dome, a sacred river, fertile landscapes, and a mysterious chasm. Its dreamlike imagery, musical language, supernatural atmosphere, and emphasis on imagination are strongly associated with Romantic poetry. The work contains 54 lines and is deliberately presented as a fragment.

Although Coleridge’s account of the poem’s composition has been questioned, the attribution is not disputed. “Kubla Khan” was published in 1816 alongside “Christabel” and “The Pains of Sleep,” after Lord Byron encouraged Coleridge to release it. It is often studied with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Christabel.”