ABSTRACT
Coleridge described how, after drinking laudanum, he fell into a drug-induced trance in which he seemed to compose two or three hundred lines of poetry. The images rose up before him as if he were the passive observer. When he awoke, he began to write them down, but was interrupted by a visitor. After returning to his writing, he found he was left with only the vaguest recollection of his original vision and could remember no more than a few scattered lines and images. Coleridge did not publish Kubla Khan for almost 20 years after it was written, and then only on the urging of Byron. This was probably because of his doubts about the worth of what he rather dismissively described as ‘a psychological curiosity’.
