Thomas Bowdler

Thomas Bowdler
Title page of Bowdler's best-known work
Born	11 July 1754 Bath, Somerset
Died	24 February 1825(1825-02-24) (aged 70) Swansea, Wales
Nationality	British
Occupation	physician, editor
Notable work	The Family Shakspeare (1807)

Thomas Bowdler, LRCP, FRS (/ˈbaʊdlər/; 11 July 1754 – 24 February 1825) was an English physician and philanthropist, best known for publishing The Family Shakspeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work, edited by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original. Although early editions of the work were published with the spelling "Shakspeare", after Bowdler's death, later editions (from 1847) adopted the spelling "Shakespeare", reflecting changes in the standard spelling of Shakespeare's name.

The eponymous verb bowdlerise (or bowdlerize) has associated his name with the censorship not only of literature but also of motion pictures and television programmes.

After several other publications, some reflecting his interest in and knowledge of continental Europe, Bowdler's last work was an expurgated version 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.

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 of Conington, Huntingdonshire. Bowdler studied medicine at the universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, where he took his degree in 1776, graduating with a thesis on intermittent fevers. He spent the next four years in 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 his 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. He devoted himself instead to the cause of prison reform. Bowdler was a strong chess player and once played eight recorded games against the best chess player of the time, François-André Danican Philidor, who was so confident of his superiority that he played with handicaps. Bowdler won twice, lost three times, and drew three times.