Why Are The Ab Allowing Posters That...
ChatterBank0 min ago
No best answer has yet been selected by ALFREDDUST. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Many thanks for your efforts Celtigra3. I'm pretty sure that this is going to be the answer,but I think the question is ambiguous.. Thomas Bowdler died in 1825 and the wreck of the Hesperus actually occurred in Boston Harbour in 1839. Longfellow wrote the poem shortly after. So I don't see how Bowdler could have 'censored it'
ALFREDDUST
Not that it helps much, but to support ALFREDDUST's contention I have a very old book entitled Longfellow's Poetical Works.
In the notes to the works there is the following
"Dec. 17 1839. - News of shipwrecks horrible ..... many ships including among others the schooner Hesperus. ...I must write a ballad upon this.
"Dec. 30, 1839 ..suddenly it came into my mind to write the ballad of the schooner Hesperus"
Clearly Thomas Bowdler had been dead for around 14 years by htis time.
One final thought. Perhaps this is a case of a question writer blythely believing something that was found on the internet. I have found a site http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=13621 which clearly states that (the deceased?) Thomas Bowdler cleaned up Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus as suggested in the question.
Of course there may have been two Bowdlers...? Its going to be interesting to see the answer publishe in the DM.
Hi, I am also having difficulty with this question and I would agree with you in that a question writer may have read the article and assumed it was true, except that in the article it does not say anywhere that Thomas Bowdler was a clergyman. It only says he was an editor, so if the Daily Mail did get their question here surely they would have put 'which Victorian editor...', not clergyman?
Hi there!! I have also answered Thomas Bowdler, and it is not the first time that a quiz writer has relied on an article/website that has incorrect information on it...see below....
.e.g....For anyone that is doing the Daily telegraph quiz (holiday to Morocco) the answer to Q15 appears to be (a) Saltfish, but any observant internet user will realise that the correct answer is in fact a sweet dumpling/dessert - but that answer option is not given. I have checked on the internet and there is ONE incorrect reference to saltfish being the correct answer, and where does it come from?....someone who wrote an article for the DAILY TELEGRAPH who are organising the quiz!!!!!!
So sometimes, they do get it wrong!!!!
Good luck to all of you out there who have spent most of christmas trying to find answers to badly worded questions with unfathomable/invisible/incorrect answers!!!
Clare (aka boatinbird)
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