One-Draft Wonder?

Could it be?

It is after all Dickens.

But how likely is it to find a typo 150 years later?

It's not really a typo. It's more a Dickensian error: on page 24 of the Signet Classic edition of Bleak House there's this line: "My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain."

Then, two pages later, there's this: "With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain."

As Jupiter Jones might say:

???

Even allowing for droll, this doesn't seem the type of line you'd repeat for stylistic purposes. It's not very memorable, even two pages later. (I'm paid to find these things; not by Signet.) Combined with Dickens' prodigious output (the blurb on the book calls the 881-page Bleak House the masterpiece of his "middle period") and the fact the uses of the phrase are so close together, AND the fact the phrase suffices in either place equally can only suggest (suggest mind you!!) that this went unnoticed for 150 years???

NB
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Published on September 11, 2013 10:17
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