Which word, meaning to censor, abridge or expurgate is taken from the name of the man who in 1807 published an expurgated 10 volume set of the works of Shakespeare entitled ‘The Family Shakspeare’?
Henrietta Maria Bowdler of a clergyman, and is said to have offered their author, through the publishers, a living in his diocese. Harriet Bowdler is also thought to have done most of the editing of the first expurgated edition of Shakespeare's works, "The Family Shakspeare" (1807). She removed anything which seemed irreverent or immoral, deleting about 10 per cent of the original. The work was published under the name of her brother, Thomas Bowdler, after whom this type of treatment came to be known as bowdlerisation. In 1810 Bowdler edited "Fragments in Prose and Verse by the late Miss Elizabeth Smith", which was
History of the Shakespeare authorship question with his confession, "The Egyptian [i.e. mysterious] verdict of the Shakspeare Societies come to mind; that he was a jovial actor and manager. I can not marry this fact to his verse." That the perceived dissonance between the man and his works was a consequence of the deification of Shakespeare was theorized by J. M. Robertson, who wrote that "It is very doubtful whether the Baconian theory would ever have been framed had not the idolatrous Shakespeareans set up a visionary figure of the Master." At the same time scholars were increasingly becoming aware that many plays were collaborations, and