Editor’s Note: Restoring the Director’s Cut

Not all bowdlerization is the result of sexual prudery. I heard Leo Steinberg once express disappointment with an edition of the Diary of John Evelyn that he was reading because the editor had decided to eliminate Evelyn’s extensive reports and critiques of sermons he attended on Sundays. The editor was convinced that no modern reader would have the slightest interest in such tedious accounts of theology and exegesis. Yet these homilies, Steinberg noted, not only excited great attention and curiosity during Evelyn’s lifetime (1620–1706), but they were regarded as important forms of communal entertainment and popular discussion,