According to the MHRA Style Guide, this item should be cited in a bibliography as follows:

White, Michael James, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 82 (MHRA, 2012)

This is how standard MHRA style would look. Some of its book series (notably Legenda) allow an alternative citation system called 'author-date', but please talk to your editor before using it. (To see the demonstration for author-date, follow this link.)

Let's take this bibliography entry one step at a time:

Step 1. The entry begins with the author(s) or editor(s) of the volume, with the first name inverted into Surname, Forename. This is because a Bibliography is a list in surname order, so we need a surname up front.

White, Michael James

Step 2. Now a comma, not a full stop:

White, Michael James,

Step 3. Here we have the book's title, in italics, not quotation marks.

White, Michael James, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function

Step 4. This book belongs to a series, so we'll name that. If the series is numbered, we give the number, too. No italics, no quotation marks in the series name.

White, Michael James, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 82

Step 5. Since this is a book, not a journal issue, we have to identify its source, in round brackets. Until 2024, MHRA style required a place of publication - for example, New York or Oxford. This is no longer given except in special circumstances.

White, Michael James, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 82 (

Step 6. Now a colon, a space, and the publisher's name. Abbreviating to 'MHRA' is fine here.

White, Michael James, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 82 (MHRA

Step 7. Then the year of first publication, and we're done with the bracketed part.

White, Michael James, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 82 (MHRA, 2012)

And that's the finished bibliography entry. Note that there's no final full stop.

So how about citations in footnotes or endnotes?

In standard MHRA style, the first time the work is cited in a note, it should be cited in full. This looks very like a Bibliography entry, but:

• The author's name doesn't always come first: only for monographs. For collections and editions, the title comes first.
• Even if the author's name does come first, it's back to being the right way round, so it's Forename Surname, not Surname, Forename;
• Unlike Bibliography entries, notes are punctuated as sentences, and usually end in full stops.

Suppose we want to cite a passage on pages 24 to 27:

³⁴ See Michael James White, Space in Theodor Fontane's Works: Theme and Poetic Function, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 82 (MHRA, 2012), pp. 24-27.

But in any subsequent notes, a heavily abbreviated form is used:

³⁷ Compare White, p. 17.