Expurgation

*The Family Shakespeare*, Thomas Bowdler's famous reworked edition of William Shakespeare's plays. 1818

An expurgation of a work, also known as a bowdlerization or fig-leaf edition, is a form of censorship that involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive from an artistic work or other type of writing or media.

The term bowdlerization is a pejorative term for the practice,^{[citation needed]} particularly the expurgation of lewd material from books. The term derives from Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of William Shakespeare's plays, which he reworked in ways that he felt were more suitable for women and children.^[1] He similarly edited Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.^[2]

A fig-leaf edition is a more satirical term for a bowdlerized text, deriving from the practice of covering the genitals of nudes in classical and Renaissance statues and paintings with fig leaves.

^ Wheeler, Kip. "Censorship and Bowdlerization" (PDF). Jefferson City, Tennessee, USA: Carson-Newman University. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 March 2012. Retrieved 22 February 2023.
^ Gibbon, Edward (1826). Gibbon's History of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, repr. with the omission of all passages of an irreligious or immoral tendency, by T. Bowdler. pp. i, iii.

[1] Wheeler, Kip. "Censorship and Bowdlerization" (PDF). Jefferson City, Tennessee, USA: Carson-Newman University. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 March 2012. Retrieved 22 February 2023.

[2] Gibbon, Edward (1826). Gibbon's History of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, repr. with the omission of all passages of an irreligious or immoral tendency, by T. Bowdler. pp. i, iii.

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