Publication History and Textual Note to The Biter, Ulysses, and The Royal Convert

On the face of it, The Biter presents few textual difficulties; it was published only once in Rowe’s lifetime, in the authorized quarto edition published by Jacob Tonson from his Gray’s Inn shop in 1705. A second edition did not appear until 1720, two years after the author’s death; Tonson and his associates issued the play a few more times as a separate publication (in 1726, 1732 and 1736), while a Dublin edition appeared in 1764. The text presented here is therefore based on the British Library copy of the 1705 edition (shelfmark 11774.d.2) and a privately owned copy of a later eighteenth-century edition.