Томас Боўдлер: Өмірбаяны мен шығармалары

English physician and editor (1754–1825)

the Anglican divine and nephew of this person

Thomas Bowdler, LRCP, FRS ('/b//aʊ//d//l//ər/; 11 July 1754 – 24 February 1825) was an English physician known for publishing The Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's plays edited by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler. The two sought a version they saw as more appropriate than the original for 19th century women and children. Bowdler also published works reflecting an interested knowledge of continental Europe. His last work was an expurgation of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published posthumously in 1826 under the supervision of his nephew and biographer, Thomas Bowdler the Younger. From his name derives the eponym verb bowdlerise or bowdlerize, meaning expurgate, censor [sth], that is the omission of elements deemed unsuited to children, in literature and films and on television.

Thomas Bowdler was born in Box, near Bath, Somerset, the youngest son of the six children of Thomas Bowdler (c. 1719–1785), a banker of substantial fortune, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Cotton (d. 1797), the daughter of Sir John Cotton, 6th Baronet of Conington, Huntingdonshire. He then spent four years travelling in continental Europe, visiting Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sicily and Portugal. In 1781 he caught a fever in Lisbon from a young friend whom he was attending through a fatal illness. He returned to England in broken health and with a strong aversion to the medical profession. In 1781 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians (LRCP), but he did not continue to practise medicine. The Bowdler Attack is named after him. Bowdler's first published work was Letters Written in Holland in the Months of September and October 1787 (1788), giving an eye witness account of the Prussian invasion of Holland. In 1800 Bowdler took a lease on a country estate at St Boniface, on the Isle of Wight, where he lived for ten years. From 1811 until his death in 1825, Bowdler lived at Rhyddings House, overlooking Swansea Bay, from where he travelled extensively in Britain and Europe. In 1815, he published Observations on Emigration to France, With an Account of Health, Economy, and the Education of Children, a cautionary work propounding his view that English invalids should avoid French spas and go instead to Malta. By 1827 the work was in its fifth edition. In his last years, Bowdler prepared an expurgated version of the works of the historian Edward Gibbon, which was published posthumously in 1826. His large library of unexpurgated volumes of 17th and 18th century tracts, collected by his ancestors Thomas Bowdler (1638–1700) and Thomas Bowdler (1661–1738), was donated to the University of Wales, Lampeter. In 1825 Bowdler's nephew, also a Thomas Bowdler, published Memoir of the Late John Bowdler, Esq., to Which Is Added, Some Account of the Late Thomas Bowdler, Esq. Editor of the Family Shakspeare.

In Bowdler's childhood, his father had entertained his family with readings from Shakespeare. Later in life, Bowdler realised his father had been omitting or altering passages he felt unsuitable for the ears of his wife and children. Bowdler felt it was worthwhile to publish an edition which might be used in a family whose father was not such a "circumspect and judicious reader" as to accomplish an expurgation himself. In 1807, the first edition of The Family Shakspeare appeared in four duodecimo volumes, containing 24 plays. In 1818 a second edition ensued covering all 36 available plays. By 1850 eleven editions had appeared. The spelling "Shakspeare", used by Bowdler and by his nephew Thomas in his memoir of Thomas Bowdler the elder, was changed in later editions (from 1847 on) to "Shakespeare", reflecting general spelling of Shakespeare's name. The Bowdlers were not the first to undertake such a project, but Bowdler's commitment not to augment or add to Shakespeare's text, merely remove sensitive material, contrasted with earlier practice. Nahum Tate as Poet Laureate had rewritten the tragedy of King Lear with a happy ending; in 1807, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb published Tales from Shakespeare for children with synopses of 20 of the plays, but seldom quoted the original text. According to the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, "More nauseous and more foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of Bowdler. No man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children."