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A 54-year-old man underwent total knee arthroplasty, during which organic plant material was incidentally discovered within the prepatellar bursa. A combination of high-dose antibiotic-loaded bone cement to implant primary components and an extended course of postoperative antibiotics were used to lower the risk of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI). One year after operation he remains infection-free with improved mobility and decreased pain.Presented with the risk of unexpected tissue contamination, the team used both high-dose antibiotic cement and a course of postoperative antibiotic therapy. This infection prevention strategy is a reasonable course of action in patients at high risk for primary PJI.

This essay investigates the liminal place in the canon of “Shakespeare's paratexts”, emphasising the importance of recent work on prefatory and terminal materials to Shakespeare's early playbook publications, such as character lists, prefatory addresses and commendatory verses. The editorial treatment of paratexts in The New Oxford Shakespeare, especially their scholarly curation and placement in its old-spelling Critical Reference Edition rather than its Modern Critical Edition, raises questions about where Shakespeare begins and ends, and how we situate him in relation to other agents of textual production. I propose the need to challenge the perceived opposition between “Shakespearean text” and “non-Shakespearean paratext”, and to consider the possibilities – raised by work in early modern paratext studies – of editing Shakespeare's paratexts as “parerga”, “metatexts”, or even just “texts”. In short, I ask, why does front matter matter when it comes to Shakespeare's changing canon?

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an enormous proliferation of printed vernacular texts that discussed and illustrated the female reproductive organs. These gynaecological and obstetrical texts, which included midwifery manuals as well as sections in large anatomical works, inflamed moral outrage (even within the medical establishment) and were stigmatised as forms of pornography. While literary, social and medical historians have addressed the relationship between medical and erotic literature in the early modern period, little has been written on the significance of book history to such discussions. In particular, paratexts (not only title-pages, dedications and prefaces, but also readers’ annotations) can tell us much about the connections between the rhetorical or ‘literary’ qualities of these books and their material life during publication and reading processes. Focusing on Helkiah Crooke’s anatomical work Mikrokosmographia; or a Description of the Body of Man (1615, 1616, 1618, 1631, 1651) and its ‘portable’ octavo epitome Somatographia Anthropine (1616, 1634) as a case study, this chapter combines archival work with analysis of rhetoric and illustrations to examine the ways in which paratexts negotiated anxieties attendant upon publishing women’s ‘secrets’ in early modern England. It considers how prefatory writers—not just authors but also translators and publishers—justified the publications to ‘legitimate readers’ (modest women and medical professionals) and admonished the intrusiveness of ‘illegitimate readers’ (laymen). These writers employed rhetorical strategies which, while explicitly establishing the publications’ legitimacy, fetishised the books as marketable erotic objects, making them more attractive to consumers driven by prurient curiosity. Through bibliographical analysis of a wide range of copies based in the UK, the USA, and Canada, comparisons are drawn between the implied readers constructed by medical paratexts and the actual readers (both male and female) who produced their own.

Charles Christopher Hunter (“Chris”), born in Nottingham, was the youngest of five children (two girls and three boys) born to the son of Mr and Mrs C W Hunter. His education, which began in earnest at High Pavement Grammar School, Nottingham, continued through graduation from Guy’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, leading to postgraduate status at the regional school of psychiatry, University of Southampton. Unlike many of today’s university freshmen, in 1968 Chris left his Nottingham home, carrying a trunk full of belongings, to find his own way to Guy’s medical school. This was the beginning of a full …

In February 1986 when the Non-Traditional Casting Project (NTCP) began its advocacy work to help forge a truly American performing arts, it was not without a great sense of irony. That an organization had to be formed in the mid-Ig8os to advocate for the full participation of AfricanAmerican, Asian-American, Hispanic-American, native American, female, disabled, and other disenfranchised artists in the performing arts was a testimony to our society's failure to acknowledge and accept people of these various groups as individuals and as Americans. This was, after all, over 30 years since the advent of the civil rights movement and more than 20 since the contemporary women's movement began. If these movements, important as they were (and are), had succeeded in re-forming our institutions, rather than merely bending them a little, a Non-Traditional Casting Project would have been superfluous. Unfortunately, although ethnic, female, and disabled persons have been accommodated to an extent in the greater society, their complete acceptance is long in coming. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the performing arts, particularly the theatre.