Chicago Referencing – Citing an Edited Book

With Chicago referencing, citing an edited book or a chapter from a collection of essays isn’t quite the same as referencing other books.

There’s also a difference between the two formats used in Chicago referencing (author–date citations and the footnote and bibliography system). In the following, we run through both.

Author–Date: In-Text Citations

The Chicago author–date system requires giving the author’s surname, the year of publication and relevant page numbers in parentheses for citations:

Ricoeur is “attuned to plurality” (Langsdorf 2002, 41).

With an edited book, it’s usually the author of the chapter that you should cite. The only time to use the editor’s name in citations is when citing an edited book in its entirety.

Author–Date: Reference List

In the reference list, the information required for a chapter from an edited book is:

Author Surname, First Name. Year of Publication. “Title of Chapter.” In Title of Book, edited by Editor Name, page range. Place of Publication: Publisher.

For instance, the paper cited above would appear as:

Langsdorf, Lenore. 2002. “The Doubleness of Subjectivity: Regenerating the Phenomenology of Intentionality.” In Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, edited by Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh, 33-55. Albany: State University of New York Press.

If referencing the volume as a whole, cite the editor(s) in place of the author(s):

Cohen, Richard A., and James L. Marsh, eds. 2002. Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Note that when a book has more than one author/editor, it’s only the first listed whose names are reversed.

Footnote and Bibliography: Footnote Citations

In the footnote and bibliography system, superscript numbers are used to indicate a citation (e.g., ¹, ², ³). In the footnote, the information to provide for a chapter from an edited book is:

^n. Author Name(s), “Chapter Title,” in Book Title, ed. Editor Name(s) (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), page number(s).

In practice, this would appear as follows:

^1. John van den Hengel, “Can There Be a Science of Action?,” in Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, ed. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 73-74.

As above, cite the editor(s) in place of the author(s) when referencing an edited volume as a whole. Subsequent citations of the same source can then be abbreviated to just the author/editor surname, chapter title and page numbers:

^1. John van den Hengel, “Can There Be a Science of Action?,” in Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, ed. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 73-74.
^2. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh, eds., Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), viii.
^3. van den Hengel, “Can There Be a Science of Action?,” 80.

Footnote and Bibliography: Bibliography

In the bibliography, the information required for a chapter from an edited book is similar to the first footnote, but with different punctuation, a complete page range and the first listed author/editor’s name reversed:

van den Hengel, John. “Can There Be a Science of Action?” In Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, edited by Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh, 71-92. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.