XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: dd@dandrake.com   
      
   On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:06:00 UTC, Isabelle Cecchini   
    wrote:   
      
   > In my copy, which is a one-volume edition of the Chronicles of Narnia,   
   > published by HarperCollins in 2001, it is definitely "harebrained", no   
   > hyphen.   
   >   
   > The quote is to be found in the chapter entitled "the High King in   
   > Command", quite near the beginning of the chapter, in the discussion   
   > between Glozelle and Sopespian.   
   >   
   > I don't know what it proves, though. It might be a silent correction on   
   > the part of HarperCollins.   
   >   
      
   Well said.   
      
   Who has the First Edition, so we can check it? (Ha ha, you know what those   
   cost?) And who says the First doesn't have a misprint?   
      
   Kidding around; but there's a point to it. A while ago there was a   
   corrected annotated pure edition of Ulysses, which was the product of   
   years of painstaking work and the object of strong criticism. Rather a   
   harder one to get right than Narnia stories, to be sure. But in a work by   
   another author, a mere mystery novel (_Whose Body_ by Dorothy L Sayers), I   
   have compared the original first edition, the second first edition, and   
   the proofs of a modern reissue, not made from the Firsts but from whatever   
   corrupt text was around; and you'd be surprised at the stuff that came up.   
   Including, naturally enough, malapropisms spoken by characters and   
   "corrected" in the later text.   
      
   Enough for the amateur literary criticism; others know as well as I, and   
   much better, how hard it is to get the Real Reading. But since the OED   
   makes it clear which is the original sense, it's reasonable to conclude   
   that the author of the Oxford History of English Literature for the 16th   
   century would be likely to use that one.   
      
   --   
   Dan Drake   
   dd@dandrake.com   
   http://www.dandrake.com/   
   porlockjr.blogspot.com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)