Chicago Referencing – Citing an Edited Book (Footnotes)

Previously, we’ve discussed citing an edited book with Chicago’s author–date citations. But a different version of Chicago referencing is more common in the humanities.

As such, herein, we’re going to run through citing an edited book with Chicago’s footnotes and bibliography system. Just don’t forget to check your style guide for which version to use!

First Footnote Citation for a Book Chapter

You can cite a source using superscript numbers in the main text of your essay (e.g. ¹, ², ³). In the accompanying footnote, give the following information the first time you cite a chapter from an edited book:

n. Author’s Name, ‘Chapter Title’, in Book Title, ed. Editor Name(s) (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), page number(s) of section being cited.

In practice, this would look something like the following:

1. Fredric Jameson, ‘Aesthetics and Politics’, in Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts, eds. Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris (London: Phaidon, 1992), 67–68.

Note that it’s the chapter author who is cited here. The only time you’ll need to cite the editors of a book is when citing an edited volume in its entirety. In this case, the first citation for Art in Modern Culture would appear as:

2. Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris, eds., Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts (London: Phaidon, 1992).

Note that we do not give a pinpoint reference here since the footnote would name the chapter author instead if it referred to a particular part of the edited volume. If you need to cite the same source later in the same document, you can use a shortened footnote format to help avoid repetition.

Citing More than One Chapter from the Same Book

If you cite more than one chapter from the same book, Chicago referencing allows you to cross-reference the first source citation when citing the new source.

This means you’ll need to give the new author’s name and new chapter title in full, but you can then shorten the rest of the citation to just the editor’s surname, the title of the edited volume, and a pinpoint citation. For instance:

1. David Carr, ‘Intentionality’, in Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, ed. Edo Pivčević (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 23.
2. Anthony Quinton, ‘The Concept of a Phenomenon’, in Pivčević, Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, 14.

Here, the second citation is from the same edited volume as the first. We therefore cross-reference the edited volume in the second citation to save having to repeat the full source details.

Listing an Edited Book Chapter in the Bibliography

As well as documenting sources in footnotes, everything you cite should be included in a bibliography at the end of your document. The information to include here for a chapter from an edited book is similar to the first footnote, but with a couple of differences:

Surname, First Name. ‘Chapter Title’. In Book Title, edited by Editor Name(s), page range. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year.

The Jameson essay from the examples above would therefore appear in the bibliography as:

Jameson, Fredric. ‘Aesthetics and Politics’. In Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts, edited by Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris, 64–73. London: Phaidon, 1992.

If you’re citing an edited volume as a whole, meanwhile, the editors’ names should be given in place of an author. In the case of Art in Modern Culture, this would appear as:

Frascina, Francis, and Jonathan Harris, eds. Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts. London: Phaidon, 1992.

As this example shows, when a book has more than one author or editor, only the first one listed has their name reversed. This is so sources can be sorted alphabetically by surname.

Listing Multiple Chapters from the Same Edited Book

If you’ve cited more than one chapter from the same book, Chicago referencing suggests giving the edited volume its own entry in the bibliography. When listing chapters from the edited volume, you can then simply cross-reference the main entry for the edited volume rather than repeating the full details.

For instance, entries for two chapters from a single edited book might look like this:

Carr, David. ‘Intentionality’. In Pivčević, Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, 17–36.

Pivčević, Edo, ed. Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Quinton, Antony. ‘The Concept of a Phenomenon’. In Pivčević, Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, 8–16.

Here, you can see that we provide the full details for the edited volume in a separate bibliography entry. The entries for the individual chapters then reference this main entry.

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