thumb|left|400px|Advertisement for 1819 edition of The Family Shakspeare Bowdler's first published work was Letters Written in Holland in the Months of September and October 1787 (1788), giving an eye-witness account of the Prussian invasion of Holland.Loughlin-Chow, M. Clare, "Bowdler, Thomas (1754–1825)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011. Retrieved 17 December 2011 In 1800 Bowdler took a lease on a country estate at St Boniface, on the Isle of Wight, 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.
thumb|left|400px|Advertisement for 1819 edition of The Family Shakspeare Bowdler's first published work was Letters Written in Holland in the Months of September and October 1787 (1788), giving an eye-witness account of the Prussian invasion of Holland.Loughlin-Chow, M. Clare, "Bowdler, Thomas (1754–1825)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011. Retrieved 17 December 2011 In 1800 Bowdler took a lease on a country estate at St Boniface, on the Isle of Wight, 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.