Banning Books

The works of Roald Dahl have been put through a sanitising process recently, as have the James Bond books, and famous novels by Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad. The process is often called 'Bowlderizing', a reference to Harriet Bowdler, who in 1807 edited the Family Shakespeare, removing anything she saw as inappropriate. Her brother Thomas did the same for Decline and Fall, Edward Gibbons' history of the Roman Empire. Book burning or book sanitising is now called 'expurgation'. One woman who knows all about banned books, and the attention they inadvertently draw, is Dr Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare studies at Oxford University.