The first paragraph of "Persuasion"

This is the first paragraph of Jane Austen's Persuasion as it appears in the Norton Critical Edition that I am using with my students:

A

            Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt. As he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century – and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed – this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

And this is the first paragraph as it appears in various online versions that I have come across, including whatever version it was I downloaded a few years ago for me and my students to work with:

B

            Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

The anaphora with "there" is much more effectively handled in B than in A, in which the last "there" is not part of the previous list of constructions beginning with "there".

The Norton Critical Edition says it is based on the first edition, but it makes me wonder about the punctuation of the first edition! And it also makes me wonder where B comes from!

Still, to my mind, the pattern of the words in this paragraph points towards punctuation along the lines of B, whose rhetorical structure is much more like Austen than A is.