was likely written in October 1797, though the precise date and circumstances of the first composition of Kubla Khan are slightly ambiguous, due to limited direct evidence. Coleridge usually dated his poems, but did not date Kubla Khan, and did not mention the poem directly in letters to his friends.

Coleridge's descriptions of the poem's composition attribute it to 1797. In a manuscript in Coleridge's handwriting (known as the Crewe manuscript), a note by Coleridge says that it was composed "in