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Mary
Wollstonecraft
Coleridge made a note to read Mary Wollstonecraft's letters ,though we do not know whether he did.
In his Note Book, he wrote:
Epistle to Mrs. Wolstoncraft urging her to Religion. Read her Travels.
We can get some idea of why Coleridge might have wanted to read her book
from a letter written by the poet Southey, in April 1797, to his brother
Tom:
Have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecraft's letters from Sweden and Norway?
She has made me in love with a cold climate, and frost and snow, with a
northern moonlight.
But even Lowes is not sure she might be a source, or influence on Kubla
Khan.
Referring to the following passage, Lowes asks hopefully:
Did that perhaps lend a word or two, at least, to "Huge fragments vaulted
like rebounding hail"? The links are there, and it is not impossible.
(p. 593)
Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters, Written during a short Residence in Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark, London, 1796 |
 Other sources
William Bartram |