'Editorial praxes cannot obtain the rigor and sharp discipline required of principled methodologies unless they account for what some have viewed as the “messy” facts of authorship, production, and reception: race, class, gender, and sexuality. This special issue of Textual Cultures features essays that focus on the interpretive consequences of any current or past editorial project and the mutual impact of editing and traditional or new historicism, history of the book, or feminist, Marxist, postcolonial, poststructural, multicultural, or queer literary theory or analysis.' (Publication introduction)