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Select an author from the Literary 100 List or from the book.

Quick answer:

Purdue Owl: Citation for Books by one Author List the author's name once, followed by a comma and a period. Following the author's name, give the title of the book in italics, underlined or enclosed in quotation marks. Place this information in parentheses after you have cited the author. The title of the book should be capitalized, as well as any words that are four letters or more. If there are more than two authors, cite them with "and" before their names and separate their names with commas. List these names under the book title inside quotation marks. If an editor is listed first and an author second, place "Ed." after the editor's name and a comma before the next name.

Expert Answers

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I might choose Ernest Hemingway. Many authors have discussed his life and works. In fact, Michael Reynolds, included below, has written about Hemingway in five different volumes. I placed him in the bibliography, so you can see how a repeated author is cited. You do not list the author's name twice. Additionally, in MLA, the bibliography is termed Works Cited.

MLA is always alphabetized by the author's last name, if an author is listed. Please see the sample below, which is from the Purdue Owl website Works Cited for books by one author. I have supplied the link, so you can go to Purdue Owl to change any list on your own!

Sample Works Cited on Ernest Hemingway:

Kert, Bernice. The Hemingway Women. Norton, 1983.

Lynn, Kenneth. Hemingway. Harvard University Press, 1995.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. Norton, 1982.

Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The 1930's. Norton, 1997.

---. Hemingway: The Final Years. Norton, 1999.

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In this assignment, you are being asked to select an important author and compile an annotated bibliography in MLA format about the author. One good author to choose would be Homer. There are many secondary works available which discuss Homer. An ideal selection would include critics who have differing opinions about major points in Homeric studies. 

Some important recent books about Homer include:

Martin, Richard P. (1989). The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. This discusses how speeches within the Iliad function as performance in a manner that is parallel to how Homer himself "performs" the epic of the Trojan War. 

Kirk, Geoffrey Stephen (1976). Homer and the Oral Tradition: This is an important work that argues for a "monumental poet" within an oral tradition. 

Lord, Albert B. (2000). Mitchell, Stephen, ed. The Singer of Tales. This is a classic statement of the pure oralist approach to Homer, showing parallels with the Slavic guslar tradition.

Powell, Barry B. (1991). Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. Powell actually argues for the Homeric epics as having a significant effect on the development of Greek literacy. 

The Cambridge Companion to Homer. (2004) Edited by Robert Fowler.  This essay collection brings together many different approaches to Homer. 

For MLA format, you begin with the name of the author, then the title of the book in italics, then the place of publication, the publisher, and finally the date of publication. 

You can find detailed information about MLA format at: 

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

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