error unnoticed in the Shelleys' proofreading of the text for the first edition. The
mistake, once in print, went unnoticed in all later editions of the novel. In Mary
Shelley's draft, however, the word is unmistakably "September." She would have had
every reason to adhere to this timeline since, just a few weeks earlier than her fictional
schedule, in 1814, it took the Shelley party nine days to cover the distance between
Basel and Rotterdam (30 August-7 September) travelling exactly as do Victor Frankenstein
and Henry Clerval and, even when adverse conditions delayed their departure from Holland,
a three days' crossing brought them to London on 13 September (see Six Weeks' Tour
for Switzerland and Holland).
The attenuated journey of the 1818 text is whittled to three months in the shifting
of the original departure date in 1831, which, as indicated earlier, may have been
done to accommodate the timespan after Victor's return from Mont Blanc rather than
his arrival date in England. In the next chapter, as recorded in both the 1818 and
1831 texts, the chronology reverts to a normative calendar and Victor observes that
he and Clerval "had arrived in England at the beginning of October" (III:2:5).