MLA Referencing – How to Cite an Edited Book

Citing an edited book can be tricky, as it’s not always clear exactly what you should be citing. Is it the author of the particular chapter you need to name? Or the editor of the book as a whole?

This is made more confusing by there being many different referencing systems, each with their own specific rules. Today, we’re going to focus on how to cite an edited book using MLA referencing.

In-Text Citations

MLA’s in-text citations require you to give the surname of the author and a relevant page or section number. This still applies when citing a single chapter/essay from a collection.

For instance, if citing an essay by Arthur Danto from an edited collection about aesthetics, we would name Danto in the citation (not the editors of the volume as a whole):

Telling artworks apart from everyday objects is not always simple (Danto 172).

The main situation in which you would cite the editors of a book is when referencing the volume as a whole, in which case no page numbers are required:

Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology (Dickie, Sclafani, and Roblin) looks at key philosophical theories.

You would also cite the editors of a collection if citing original material they have contributed, such as an introduction or commentary, giving page numbers where appropriate:

Dickie, Sclafani and Roblin state that Hume is interested in aesthetics, not art specifically (5).

Reference List: Single Essay/Chapter

Most of the time, you’ll be citing a single chapter or essay from an edited volume. In such cases, the ‘Works Cited’ page should include the following information:

Author Surname, Forename. ‘Chapter Title’. Title, edited by Editor’s Name, Publisher, Year Published, Page Numbers.

The Danto article cited above, for example, would appear on the ‘Works Cited’ page as:

Danto, Arthur. ‘The Artistic Enfranchisement of Real Objects: The Artworld’. Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, edited by George Dickie, Richard Sclafani, and Ronald Roblin, St. Martin’s Press, 1989, pp. 171-82.

Reference List: Entire Volume

Citing an entire volume is fairly unusual, but if you need to include an edited book on your ‘Works Cited’ page, the format required is:

Editor Surname, Forename, editor. Title of Book. Publisher, Year of Publication.

If multiple editors are listed, only the first one named is inverted. Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology would therefore appear as:

Dickie, George, Richard Sclafani, and Ronald Roblin, editors. Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology. St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

MLA also allows you to cross-reference items in your reference list if you’re citing multiple essays from one edited volume.

To do this, give a reference for the volume as a whole as shown above and refer back to this for each essay in your ‘Works Cited’ page, remembering to maintain alphabetical order, e.g.:

Danto, Arthur. ‘The Artistic Enfranchisement of Real Objects: The Artworld’. Dickie, Sclafani, and Roblin, pp. 171-82.

Dickie, George, Richard Sclafani, and Ronald Roblin, editors. Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology. St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Hume, David. ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. Dickie, Sclafani, and Roblin, pp. 242-53.

Lyas, Colin. ‘Personal Qualities and the Intentional Fallacy’. Dickie, Sclafani, and Roblin, pp. 452-54.