Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on September 21, 2003 at 09:04:13 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Winter Holiday Reading Level-Ooops posted by Peter H on September 15, 2003 at 20:13:26:
My favourite bit of over-proof reading occurred in the pre-Gatesian era and is a very well known one; the opening of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", in which the narrator is sitting on the deck of a friend's yacht, anchored in the lower Thames, probably the Lower Hope, in a flat calm, waiting for the tide to turn so they can continue their cruise into the estuary, and Marlow, the teller of the tale, starts his yarn.
The river is described, in all early editions, as showing the gleams of vanished spirits.
Very poetical, but what Conrad wrote was "gleams of varnished sprits" - he meant Thames barges, not ghosts!