Answer: Quoting a Book’s Section Written by a Single Author

F.A.Q. #16

I am a second year English Studies’ student in the United Kingdom. I am currently doing an assignment in literature where I want to reference a book by four authors, A.L Le Quesne, George P. Landow, Stefan Collini and Peter Stansky. The book is entitled Victorian Thinkers with a section by each author on Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and Morris.

I need to reference the section concerning Ruskin (written by Landow) as that is the only section I am concerned with. Do I still quote all four authors of the book (I mean one author and et al.) but then cite the particular chapter by Landow separately?

Answer

When a book is written collectively by numerous authors and when each author is the sole creator of a specific and complete section of the book, then an adequate footnote representing Ruskin’s section should be included in this format:

¹ George P. Landow, “Title of the book’s particular section”, in A.L. Le Quesne et al., Victorian Thinkers: Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Morris, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. xx-yy.

(Please note that “xx” is the first page number of the “Ruskin” section and “yy” is the last page number of the “Ruskin” section).

The bibliography reference would look like this:

Le Quesne, A. L. et al. Victorian thinkers: Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Morris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. 428 p.

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Footnotes and Punctuation Marks