This year, I read a first edition book, Wertheimer’s Rethinking the Ethics of Clinical Research, and I wrote down every single typo or other sort of mistake that I found in the book. It was quite an extensive list by the end of it.
I suppose through that effort, I became more sensitive to finding typos wherever I look. I recently re-read a book from my childhood that remains a favourite of mine: The Silver Chair, by C. S. Lewis.
And I found a typo in it. I scanned it and posted it as an image attached to this post.
It’s on p. 122. I’m sort of tempted to go to a library and see if the same typo is in other editions. The edition that I have is the 1995 Scholastic reprint. Can anyone else, who has a copy of another edition of The Silver Chair, find this typo in their copy? I’m really curious as to how widespread this is, and how far back the typo goes.
Is it unique to the 1995 Scholastic edition? Or does this typo go all the way back, unnoticed to Lewis himself?
I’ve got a version from 1975 that doesn’t have the typo. Also, way to notice these things. Normally I read so quickly that the typos don’t even register, especially in old favorites.
Now that is interesting.
That means that at some point between 1975 and 1995, someone working for the publisher must have re-typed the whole of The Silver Chair and made that mistake when typesetting it.
You get 5 points for looking that up. :)
I have a 2004 Harper collins anthology with (as far as I can tell) the original 1953 manuscript. There is no typo.
Five points for you too!
This is another point in favour of the “typo came from a reprinting between 1975 and 1995” theory.
I have the version with all seven books, and The Silver Chair has only 106 pages. So I don’t know what page to check.
It’s in the chapter called “How They Discovered Something Worth Knowing,” I think.