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

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (Legenda, 2000), pp. 385–400, doi:

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. We start with the name(s) of the author(s) of the article, inverting the first name into the form 'Forename, Surname'.

Cox, Virginia

Step 2. This is regular MHRA style, so the name's followed by a comma.

Cox, Virginia,

Step 3. Now we add the title, in single inverted commas. Any single quotation marks already in the title must be converted to doubles.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’

Step 4. We have to say where this comes from, so:

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in

Step 5. Next we identify where the article is to be found, using italics, not quotation marks, for the volume title.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society

Step 6. After the title come any editors or translators. It's 'ed. by', not 'ed by', because although 'ed.' abbreviates 'edited', we regard the 'd' as the second letter of 'edited', not the last: so the abbreviation doesn't contain the last letter, and thus must have a full stop '.'

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza

Step 7. 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.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (

Step 8. Now a colon, a space, and the publisher's name. Here that's Legenda because this is the imprint name under which the book is published, even though Legenda is not strictly speaking a company. To decide these things, one must look at the exact wording of the preliminary pages. Our preference is for Legenda books to be cited as 'Legenda', and we word our preliminaries with that aim.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (Legenda

Step 9. Then the year of first publication, and we're done with the bracketed part.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (Legenda, 2000)

Step 10. Now the pagination. And we use 'p.' or 'pp.' as appropriate. Number ranges are elided in the last two digits: thus '2234-2265' should be '2234-65', and '102-109' should be '102-09'.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (Legenda, 2000), pp. 385–400

Step 11. This contribution has a DOI, so the Fourth Edition Guide (2024) requires us to quote it, like so.

Cox, Virginia, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (Legenda, 2000), pp. 385–400, doi:

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 Virginia Cox, ‘Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. by Letizia Panizza (Legenda, 2000), pp. 385–400, doi:, pp. 24-27.

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

³⁷ Compare Cox, p. 17.