Citation Style Guide

MHRA Style — Complete Citation Guide

The Modern Humanities Research Association style — footnote-based referencing used in literature, history, languages, philosophy, and the arts across UK universities.

In this guide
MHRA overview Footnotes Book Journal article Chapter in edited book Website Subsequent citations (ibid / op. cit.) Bibliography MHRA vs Chicago — key differences Common mistakes

MHRA overview

MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) style is a footnote-based referencing system widely used in the UK humanities — particularly English literature, history, modern languages, philosophy, and cultural studies. It is published by the MHRA in the MHRA Style Guide (3rd edition, 2013), which is freely available for download.

Like OSCOLA and Chicago Notes-Bibliography, MHRA uses numbered footnotes for all citations. There are no parenthetical in-text citations — every source reference appears in a footnote at the bottom of the page or in endnotes. A bibliography at the end lists all sources alphabetically.

MHRA key features

Footnotes in MHRA

A superscript number in the text corresponds to a footnote citation at the bottom of the page. The number is placed immediately after the text being cited — typically after a closing quotation mark or after a full stop, depending on whether the citation refers to the whole sentence or a specific quoted passage.

In-text with footnote number
The novel's ending deliberately subverts the conventions of Victorian closure: 'We must part now, I know, yet the world itself parts us no further than this page.'¹
The footnote ¹ at the bottom of the page gives the full citation for the source of that quotation.

Book

Footnote format (first citation)
First Last, Title of Book, edition (Place: Publisher, Year), p. XX.
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 45.
Bibliography format
Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)
Note: No page number in the bibliography entry. Surname first, with a comma after.

Journal article

Footnote format
First Last, 'Title of Article', Journal Name, Volume (Year), Pages (p. XX).
Elaine Showalter, 'Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness', Critical Inquiry, 8 (1981), 179–205 (p. 192).
The pinpoint page goes in parentheses after the page range of the article as a whole.
Bibliography format
Showalter, Elaine, 'Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness', Critical Inquiry, 8 (1981), 179–205

Chapter in an edited book

Footnote format
First Last, 'Title of Chapter', in Title of Book, ed. by First Last (Place: Publisher, Year), pp. XX–XX (p. XX).
Homi K. Bhabha, 'Of Mimicry and Man', in The Location of Culture, ed. by Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85–92 (p. 86).

Website

Footnote format
First Last, 'Title of Page', Website Name (Day Month Year) <URL> [accessed Day Month Year]
Daniel Trilling, 'On Kazuo Ishiguro', London Review of Books Blog (5 October 2017) <https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/10/05/daniel-trilling/on-kazuo-ishiguro> [accessed 10 February 2024]

Subsequent citations — ibid. and shortened form

How to cite the same source again

Ibid.: "In the same place" — use when the immediately preceding footnote cites the same source and same page. Ibid. is italicised in MHRA.

Ibid., p. 47. — Same source, different page.

Shortened form: When the same source is cited again but is NOT immediately preceding, use a shortened citation: Last, Short Title, p. XX.

Eagleton, Literary Theory, p. 78.

Bibliography

The bibliography lists all sources cited in the footnotes, arranged alphabetically by author surname. The format differs from the footnote format in several ways:

Example bibliography entries
Bhabha, Homi K., 'Of Mimicry and Man', in The Location of Culture, ed. by Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85–92
Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)
Showalter, Elaine, 'Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness', Critical Inquiry, 8 (1981), 179–205

MHRA vs Chicago Notes-Bibliography

Common MHRA mistakes

Related Citation Guides
Style
Chicago Style
Style
OSCOLA (Law)
Style
MLA 9th Edition
Style
Turabian Style

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