The cover series for the current volume of the BDJ (Volume 223) is based on dentistry in literature.

Each of the 12 covers for this volume will illustrate instances where dentistry or teeth feature in literature. A wide range of sources were considered by the editorial and production team: from well known 'great works' to more obscure authors and from older classics to modern novels.

The first cover in the series, which was published on 7 July 2017, depicts Babet, the 'dental practitioner' from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the French historical novel first published in 1862. The second cover [this issue] features Richard III, who in Shakespeare's play is said to have been born with teeth and 'camest to bite the world'.

Artist Matthew Laznicka has produced each of the 12 cover illustrations for the BDJ.

Melissa Cassem, Art Editor for the BDJ Portfolio, said: 'Once we had decided on the 12 literary excerpts for the covers, the difficult part was deciding on how we could visualise each of them.

'We shortlisted a few illustrators, all of whom had book illustrations within their folio, but we loved Matthew's classic style, which has a painterly feel, despite being digital.'

Future covers will depict scenes relating to Bram Stoker's Dracula, Agatha Christie's One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, Hans Christian Andersen's Auntie toothache, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath and more.