Thomas Bowdler: An Editor Not to Emulate
Bowdlerize: to expurgate by omitting parts considered vulgar.
An editor should be humble. At least that’s what I think, and I know a lot about this sort of thing. Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825) was not what you would call a “humble” editor. In fact, he was so un-humble his name became synonymous with the wholesale purging of “offensive” material from literary works.
Bowdler set out to be a physician, but his own serious illness and injury kept him from practicing his chosen profession. So, eventually, he decided to edit and improve literature, beginning with Shakespeare. Bowdler’s The Family Shakespeare was published in 1818. He assured readers of a delicate nature that “those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” In other words, he took out all the good parts. Critics howled. The public, however, approved. The book was reissued at least eight times.
Bowdler next took on Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He carefully omitted “all passages of an irreligious or immoral tendency.” The editor declared this edition to be an improvement of which Gibbon would have approved. He even believed, most un-humbly, that this sanitized and inoffensive volume would become the definitive edition of Gibbon’s work.
Perhaps I’m judging old Bowdler too harshly. He did live in a different time, after all—a time in which ladies regularly swooned when confronted with the word “damn” or a naked ankle (at least this is what various period romance novels have led me to believe). As children, many of us read abridged versions of the classics with the naughty words and such taken out. Do such sanitized books take anything away from the original, or do they inspire an early love of reading?
Still, there’s something troubling about the notion that “the public can’t handle this, so I will fix it for them.” Personally, I am not a big fan of cursing, graphic sex, or rip-his-guts-out violence. When I’m looking for entertainment, I generally steer clear of books, movies, music, etc., that are filled with such things. Professionally, I’ve read quite a few things that have offended me in some way. And yet, I’ve managed to live right through it. My mind has not been contaminated; I’m still sweet little ol’ me; heck, I didn’t even swoon. And most importantly, I have never arrogantly “Andrewsized” anyone’s book.
(Definition from The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Other material from The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories.)
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