Books

London: John Murray, 1816. First edition. Bound in full red polished calf by Zaehnsdorf: gilt ruled on the boards, marbled end papers, all edge gilt. Bound without the half-title or ads. With the armorial bookplate of Duff Cooper, First Viscount Norwich, on the front paste-down. A bit of rubbing along the outer joint, but holding well. A few spots of foxing internally, mostly on the binder's blanks. A lovely copy of one of Coleridge's best works. Mythical in both its content and creation, Kubla Khan emerged from one of Coleridge's laudanum induced dreams. By his own account, Coleridge dreamt of the Mongol emperor not in his historical context as a tyrant, but as a figure of contradiction and artistic complexity. "Coleridge’s Khan is a kind of artist, summoning into being with a God-like command not only the beauty of the pleasure-dome but the ordered loveliness of its cultivated gardens, full of sweet smells and tinkling streams, all sheltered from the outside world by robust…