Books with Editors or Translators
MLA:
Wertsch, James, ed. The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology. Armonk: Sharpe, 1981.
[editor, by last name.] [title.] [city of publication: publisher, year.]APA:
Wertsch, J. (Ed.). (1981). The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. Armonk: Sharp.
[last name, initial.] [(year).] [title.] [city of publication: publisher.]Chicago:
3. Wertsch, Concept of Activity, 7.
[fn. #.] [author last name, shortened title, page quoted.]
[Shortened Chicago reference; see More Notes on Chicago Style for more information.]
There are two different kinds of books that have an editor: anthologies and older works.
ANTHOLOGIES
As discussed in Books vs. Articles, an anthology is a collection of articles by different authors; most anthologies list on the title page the name of an editor who selected the articles (some anthologies have multiple editors). When listing the anthology in your Works Cited or References, list by the editor’s name, followed by a comma, then add “ed.” (for “editor”). The example above (Wertsch) is an anthology.
OLDER WORKS
In the case of older works, sometimes an editor has worked on the text even though it has a single primary author. For instance, many publications of Shakespeare’s plays credit an editor who made decisions about which previous copies to trust and which words need additional explanation. In those cases, if the material you’re quoting is from the main text, you list by the original author’s name, followed by the title, then add “Ed.” (for “edited by”) and the editor’s name. As with other books, you would list the publication year for the book you’re using at the end of the listing. But you may also want to include the original publication date just after the title, to give readers a little more context for your citation. So if you were quoting from Shakespeare’s Tempest, you’d cite it as below.
MLA:
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. 1604. Ed. Peter Holland. New York: Penguin, 1999.
[author, by last name.][title.][“Ed.” editor, by first name.][city: publisher, year.]APA:
Shakespeare, W. (1999). The tempest (P. Holland, Ed.). New York: Penguin.
[last name, initial.] [(year).] [title] [(editor, by initial, “Ed.”).] [city: publisher.]
(Original work published 1604.)Chicago:
4. Shakespeare, Tempest, III, ii, 21.
[fn. #.] [author last name, title, act-scene-line for quoting plays.]
[Shortened Chicago reference; see More Notes on Chicago Style for more information.]
[Note: In the Bibliography, Chicago style spells out “edited by” or “translated by” where relevant.]
If the material you’re using is not from the main text, you may want to list by the editor. For instance, if you’re quoting in your essay something Peter Holland says about The Tempest, you might list by Holland’s name. See Prefaces, Forewords, & Introductions for more information.
TRANSLATORS
For translated works, list by the name of the original author. After the title, add “Trans.” (for “translated by”) and the translator’s name, followed by a period.
MLA:
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.
[author, by last name.] [title.] [translator, by first name.] [city of publication: publisher, year.]APA:
Derrida, J. (1981). Dissemination (B. Johnson, Trans.). Chicago: U of Chicago P.
[last name, initial.] [(year).] [title] [translator in parentheses.] [city of publication: publisher.]Chicago:
5. Derrida, Dissemination, 91.
[fn. #.] [author last name, title, page quoted.]
[Shortened Chicago reference; see More Notes on Chicago Style for more information.]
[Note: In the Bibliography, Chicago style spells out “edited by” or “translated by” where relevant.]
Back to Sources index | Back to How to Cite Books index
