SED Expanded Reference Guide

Poems and plays are referenced in a similar way to books and chapters in edited collections (author’s name, title of work, editor, publication details). References to plays and long poems should indicate the act and scene (or book/canto), where the quotation occurs as well as line numbers (where given). References to short poems should also include line numbers where available. See below for example of each case in turn. Students taking ESH101 Shakespeare can also see the additional Shakespeare guidance provided by tutors on this course, which deals with the special case of referencing plays from the Norton collection.

Short poems in collections

Treat like chapters in a book, but include part and line numbers if available:

1. Wallace Stevens, ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’, in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edn, ed. by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy (London: W. W. Norton, 2005), pp. 1264-5.
2. Sylvia Plath, ‘Tulips’, Ariel (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), pp. 12-14.
3. John Donne, ‘The Sun Rising’, in Four Metaphysical Poets, ed. by Douglas Brooks-Davies (London: J. M. Dent, 1997), pp. 15-16 (ll. 11-14).
4. Robert Herrick, 'His Farewell to Sack', in Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets, ed. by Hugh Maclean (London: Norton, 1974), pp. 110-12 (ll. 29-30).

Long poems

If published alone, treat like a book but include canto and line numbers; if in a collection treat like a chapter in a book:

1. William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805), in The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative Texts, Context and Reception: Recent Critical Essays, ed. by Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill (London: Norton, 1979), xiii. 86-90.
2. T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’, in The Waste Land and Other Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), pp. 21-46 (v. 228-330).

Plays (published alone)

Treat like a book but include act, scene and line numbers where available.

1. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, ed. by Philip Smith (New York: Dover, 1992), ii.
2. William Shakespeare, Richard III, ed. by E. A. J. Honigmann (London: Penguin, 1995), iii. 1. 7-16.  

Plays in collections

Include the page range followed by the act, scene and line numbers where available.

1. Much Ado about Nothing, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), pp. 1407-70, iv. 1. 33-34.
2. Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding, in The House of Bernalda Alba and Other Plays, ed. by Christopher Maurer, trans. by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata (London: Penguin, 2001), pp. 1-64, iii.
3. Sidney Grundy, The New Woman, in The New Woman and Other Emancipated Woman Plays, ed. Jean Chothia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 1-59, i. 1. 272-73.