diff -ur libxml2-2.4.11.old/tree.c libxml2-2.4.11/tree.c
--- libxml2-2.4.11.old/tree.c	Mon Nov 26 14:35:05 2001
+++ libxml2-2.4.11/tree.c	Thu Jan 10 15:41:43 2002
@@ -2777,8 +2777,18 @@
 		     xmlBufferLength(node->content));
 #endif
     }
-    if (parent != NULL)
-        xmlAddChild(parent, ret);
+    if (parent != NULL) {
+        xmlNodePtr last = parent->last;
+        xmlNodePtr child = xmlAddChild(parent, ret);
+        if (last == child) {
+            /*
+             * When copying consecutive text nodes, xmlAddChild will
+             * free 'ret' and return parent->last. In that case return
+             * parent->last as well...
+             */
+             return last;
+        }
+    }
     
     if (!recursive) return(ret);
     if (node->nsDef != NULL)
@@ -2849,8 +2859,17 @@
 	    } else {
 		q = (xmlNodePtr) doc->intSubset;
 	    }
-	} else
+	} else {
 	    q = xmlStaticCopyNode(node, doc, parent, 1);
+            if (p == q) {
+                /*
+                 * The node 'node' was a text node merged into the
+                 * previous node 'p'
+                 */
+                node = node->next;
+                continue;
+            }
+        }
 	if (ret == NULL) {
 	    q->prev = NULL;
 	    ret = p = q;