Jaggard p.522; the somewhat unhandy single volume conveniently rebound in two. Although Bowdler's Shakespeare may seem to epitomise one aspect of the Victorian age, it actually made its first complete appearance in 1818, the days of the Regency bucks, and an edition containing a selection of the plays was issued ten years earlier. This is the seventh edition, and it continued to be published late into the century. Often dismissed out of hand, it is well to remember the somewhat unexpected tribute of Swinburne: 'no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him in the hands of intelligent and imaginative children'. Bowdlerisation was, indeed, a long time a-dying; the present cataloguer, admittedly a septuagenarian, studied Antony and Cleopatra for GCE A-level in the 1960s, using a text with omissions considered necessary as it was 'likely to be used by young students' -- actually, as our English master observed, to spare teachers from awkward explanations. For a recent generous assessment of the Bowdler Shakespeare, see Colin Franklin's paper in The Book Collector, Summer 2000. As Mr. Franklin concludes: 'And let us not suppose that we have arrived at everlasting or temporary commonsense or stability in these matters. Passions are restrained, most days of most lives, impulses disciplined. We are all Bowdlers, in no position to mock.'