Monday, April 16, 2018

Improbable typos and poetic justice

Returning to the improbable alternative--that "Blitzen" was what Moore had written all along, and "Blixem" the result of scribal or editorial interference... --MacDonald P. Jackson, Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? page 178.
In another footnote on the very next page, Professor Jackson surely means "Blitzen" instead of "Blitzem." But there you have it, a highly "improbable" typo, fossilized in print:
... This would, of course, imply that Moore's change from "was" to "he had" was a miscorrection, as suspicious as the change from "Blixem" to "Blitzem."  --MacDonald P. Jackson, Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? page 179.
What are the odds?

Chapter 3 footnote 19 with typographical error "Blitzem" in
Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? by MacDonald P. Jackson
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