Acknowledgements

This book is the result of a Medical Humanities Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust (h5213000). My sincere thanks go to them for their support throughout my career. Preliminary research was carried out during a long-term fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the most welcoming place in which I have had the pleasure to study. During this project, I have been fortunate in meeting a great many people who gave freely of their time and wisdom. My mentor at the University of Reading, Michelle O’Callaghan, helped to make this book better and bolder in myriad ways, not least through her encyclopaedic knowledge of early modern texts. My colleagues Andrew Mangham and Rohan Deb Roy read and gave advice on endless iterations of funding applications. Hannah Newton provided knowledge, friendship, and tea. In the public engagement activities which accompanied the research for this book, I met academics, artists, and practitioners who shaped my thinking in ways I could not have foreseen. These include Verity Burke, CN Lester, Maggi Stratford, Tracey Harwood, Camille Baker, and Jane Boston. I am also grateful to my editor at Cambridge University Press, Emily Hockley, and to the anonymous readers who provided insightful and constructive feedback. A section of Chapter 3 originally appeared as ‘“Keep Your Face out of My Way or I’ll Bite off Your Nose”: Homoplastics, Sympathy, and the Noble Body in the Tatler, 1710’ in Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 17, no. 4 (2017), 113–32. I would like to thank the University of Pennsylvania Press for permission to reprint that material here

Last, but by no means least, are my friends, family, and husband, who take a faintly bemused but ever tolerant approach to my macabre research interests.