This new Oxford Classical Text of Sophocles is the product of many years of close collaboration between the two editors. Most of the major difficulties of text and interpretation have been discussed in graduate seminars held in Oxford. The evidence of the manuscript tradition has been carefully assessed, and the results of one important discovery have been exploited for the first time. It has also been possible to take account of many little-known or forgotten conjectures, mostly due to critics of the nineteenth century, and some of these have been adopted or given a place in the apparatus criticus. A number of other conjectures are correctly attributed for the first time, and in a few passages the editors have ventured to offer proposals of their own.