where he lived for ten years. In September 1806, aged 52, he married Elizabeth Trevenen (née Farquharson), aged 48, widow of a naval Captain James Trevenen, who had died in Catherine the Great's service at Kronstadt in 1790. The marriage was unhappy and after a few years they separated. They had no children. After the separation, the marriage was never mentioned in the Bowdler family. The biography of Bowdler by his nephew, Thomas Bowdler, makes no mention of him ever marrying. In 1807, the first edition of the Bowdlers' The Family Shakspeare, covering 20 plays, appeared in four small volumes. 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. In 1818, Bowdler published an expanded edition of The Family Shakspeare, covering all 36 available plays. This had much success. 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 sister Jane Bowdler (1743–1784) was a poet and essayist. Another sister, Henrietta Maria Bowdler (Harriet) (1750–1830), collaborated with Bowdler on his expurgated Shakespeare. Bowdler died in Swansea aged 70 and was buried at Oystermouth. He left bequests to the poor of Swansea and Box. 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. The Family Shakespeare 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