Cite a book in Harvard
Books are the simplest source type to cite, but they still trip people up on edition numbers, editor vs author roles, and where the publisher city goes. Harvard (Cite Them Right 12) has clear rules, and once you know them a book reference takes under a minute to format by hand.
Harvard rules for a book
- Author last name comes first, with initials or first name depending on the style.
- Year of publication goes right after the author block, in parentheses for author-date styles.
- Book title is italicized, sentence case for APA, title case for MLA/Chicago/Harvard.
- Publisher name appears after the title; no need for the publisher city in APA 7.
- Include the edition number in parentheses after the title if it is not the first edition.
- Place city before publisher: 'City: Publisher'.
Worked example
Harvard · bookA real book formatted using the Harvard rules above.
Sagan, Carl (1995) *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*. Ballantine Books.
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Citation fields
Harvard book citation guide
The Cite Them Right book reference
Harvard book references are where the style's roots in British academic publishing show most clearly. The Cite Them Right pattern is Author (Year) Title. Edition if not first. Place of publication: Publisher. So a first-edition book reads Sagan, C. (1995) The Demon-Haunted World. New York: Ballantine Books. Two features stand out immediately: Harvard keeps the place of publication, which APA 7 dropped, and it separates that place from the publisher with a colon. Getting the City: Publisher punctuation right is a small but reliable marker of a correct Harvard reference.
The author is given as surname then initials, with the year in parentheses straight afterwards to match the in-text citation. The book title is italicised. Cite Them Right uses minimal capitalisation similar to sentence case for the title in many examples, but institutional variants differ, so confirm whether your guide wants title case or sentence case. The publisher's name comes last after the colon, given in a recognisable short form.
Editions, editors, and multiple authors
If the book is not the first edition, the edition is named after the title and before the place of publication, abbreviated as 4th edn. — note that Cite Them Right Harvard uses edn. rather than the ed. you may see in other styles. An edited book opens with the editor followed by (ed.) for one editor or (eds.) for several. A translated work names the translator after the title, introduced by Translated by.
For two or three authors, Harvard lists them all, separating the names and using and before the last: Smith, J., Jones, R. and Patel, A. (Year). For four or more authors, Cite Them Right allows you to give the first author followed by et al., though some institutions ask for all authors in the reference list and et al. only in text. This is exactly the kind of detail where your university's guide overrides the general convention, so check before you submit a multi-author reference.
In-text citation and page numbers
Harvard in-text citations are author-date in parentheses: (Sagan, 1995). For a direct quotation or a reference to a specific passage, add the page with p. or pp.: (Sagan, 1995, p. 42). When the author appears in your sentence, only the year and any page go in brackets: Sagan (1995, p. 42) argues that... This running author-date integration is what makes Harvard feel different from a footnote style.
For a work with two or three authors, name them all in the in-text citation joined by and: (Smith, Jones and Patel, 2020). With four or more, use the first author and et al.: (Smith et al., 2020). The first element of the reference-list entry must match the in-text citation, so an edited book cited by editor must be referred to by that editor's surname. Build the reference with the generator below, then check the two Harvard signatures: the Place: Publisher colon and the year sitting immediately after the author.