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This edition by Richard Porson (1759-1808) of Euripides' plays was published posthumously in 1820. It contains the Greek text of Euripides' four most popular plays: Hecuba, Orestes, The Phoenician Women and Medea, which had previously been published as individual titles. Each play is preceded by a list of manuscript witnesses and accompanied by a running Latin commentary, containing detailed text-critical, exegetical and philological notes. The volume is introduced by a Latin preface and supplement which expound Porson's theories on the metrical rules followed by Attic poets. Porson explains how he used these theories as a tool to make judgements between variant readings. These critical texts on the tragedies have been widely used by students of classical Greek tragedy and a number of English translations have been based on his reconstructed text. Porson's commentaries have been used by many generations of classical students in both Latin and English translation.

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Richard Porson (1759-1808) published editions of Euripides' Hecuba (1779), Orestes (1798), The Phoenician Women (1799) and Medea (1801) as individual volumes. They were collected and published together in 1826, some years after Porson's death, as Euripidis Tragoediae Priores Quatuor, edited by James Scholefield (1789-1853). The volume contains Porson's reconstructed Greek text of the four tragedies accompanied by a detailed Latin commentary. The volume is introduced by a Latin preface and a supplement expounding Porson's theories on the metrical rules followed by Attic poets. These theories about metre lay behind many of the choices of readings found in the critical text of each play. Porson's critical texts of the plays influenced generations of scholars, and his commentaries were widely studied, both in Latin and in English translation, for over a century. The volume remains a key work of classical scholarship.

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Edited from Porson's notebooks by two of his Cambridge colleagues, Adversaria was published posthumously in 1812. It includes Porson's prelection (delivered when he was a candidate for the Regius Professorship of Greek) and notes and emendations to his monumental edition of Euripides as well as to editions of other Greek writings. Among his contributions to nineteenth-century classical scholarship was the discovery of a rule relating to the position of words in Greek trimeters which is still known as Porson's law. His scholarly style, which focused on metre and language rather than interpretation, set the standard for classical textual criticism at Cambridge for several decades. One of Porson's legacies was the design of a Greek typeface based on his handwriting, commissioned from Richard Austin by Cambridge University Press. 'Porson Greek' was widely used in British publications for well over a century.