How to Cite a Republished or Reprinted Work

A reprint is two books at once. The words may be a century old; the pagination, the introduction and the publisher are new. Every style handles this the same way in principle — describe the copy you read, then record the original date — but they disagree about where the original date goes, and two of them publish no rule for it at all.

The worked example is a real reprint, verified on 22 September 2026 in the K10plus union library catalogue (record 177452029X, retrieved through its SRU interface): William Faulkner, Soldiers' Pay, Garden City, NY: Dover Publications, 2022, in the Dover Thrift Editions series, xi + 238 pages, ISBN 978-0-486-84972-0. The catalogue note reads: "Unabridged republication of the work, originally published by Boni & Liveright, New York, in 1926", and the record's original-version field gives 1926.

What to Collect

• The author
• The title, as the reprint prints it
• The publisher, place and year of the reprint
• The original publisher, place and year
• The series the reprint belongs to, if any
• Whether the reprint is unabridged, abridged or a facsimile
• Any new front matter — an introduction or foreword by someone else — and who wrote it

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

APA's Common Reference Examples handout has no republished-book entry, and neither the University of Queensland Library's nor Murdoch University's APA guide publishes one. Both, however, publish the element APA uses for this job — "(Original work published YEAR)" at the end of the reference, with both years in the in-text citation — in their translated-book entries. UQ's in-text form there is "(Ylinen, 2007/2008)".

Applying that element to a republication:

In-text: (Faulkner, 1926/2022)

This is APA's republication element applied, not an APA-published reprint example, because no reprint example is published in the sources above. Say so in a note if your marker asks.

For an article reprinted in a course reader, Murdoch's APA guide does publish a form. Its examples, verbatim:

MLA (9th Edition)

The MLA Style Center publishes a post on this exact case, "How do I create a works-cited-list entry for a reprinted book?", and it gives two options. Both examples below are MLA's own, verbatim.

The original year in the supplemental element straight after the title:

Or, if you want to name the original publisher too, in the supplemental element at the end:

MLA points to sections 5.108 and 5.114 of the MLA Handbook, 9th ed., for original publication dates and publication history. Applied to the verified example:

In-text: (Faulkner [page])

Chicago (18th Edition)

There is no free Chicago reprint format. The Citation Quick Guide's thirteen entries — book; chapter or other part of an edited book; translated book; book consulted in an electronic format; journal article; news or magazine article; book review; interview; thesis or dissertation; web page; social media content; video or podcast; personal communication — do not include one, and Murdoch University's Chicago author-date guide has no reprint page either. The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., is subscription-only and does treat original publication details; if you are writing in Chicago, check the manual or ask your department, and in the meantime give both the reprint's publication details and the original ones so nothing is lost.

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

Cite Them Right is subscription-only. Of the two university Harvard guides used throughout these pages, the University of Sheffield's has no republished-source entry; the University of York's does. York's entry, verbatim, including its explanation:

This format is for when you read a more recent version of an older work. In-text, the date of the original publication is given first, with the later version in [ ], with any page reference to this newer version following. In the bibliography/ reference list you give the date and details of the version you read, with the original publisher and date at the end of the reference.

In-text, York gives: (Dickens, 1846 [2005], p.29)

Applied to the verified example:

In-text: (Faulkner, 1926 [2022], p.[page])

Because only one of the two guides publishes this entry, name York in a note if your department asks where the format came from.

IEEE

The IEEE Reference Guide has no reprint or republication section: its book subsections cover books, foreign or translated publications, books with chapter titles, editors, series and editions, and electronic books. Cite the copy you read as an ordinary book and place the original publication details where they cannot be mistaken for the reprint's:

In-text: [1]

That trailing sentence is not an IEEE-published form; it is added so the original date is not lost. If your journal's editors have a house rule for reprints, theirs wins.

Missing Elements

No original date on the copyright page. Check a union or national library catalogue: reprints are usually catalogued with an original-version note and often a dedicated field for the original date.

A facsimile with no new imprint. Facsimiles sometimes reproduce the original title page and nothing else. Cite the publisher who issued the facsimile and the year they issued it, and give the original details from the reproduced page.

An abridged reprint. Say that it is abridged. A quotation's absence from an abridgement is a fact about the edition, not about the author.

A reprint that is also a translation. Both sets of details are needed: the translator, the translation's date and the original's date. See citing a translated work.

A new introduction you want to quote. That is a separate piece of writing by a separate author. Cite it as a part of the book, with its own author, and keep it distinct from the work itself.

Common Mistakes

• Giving only the original date, so your page numbers do not match any copy your reader can find
• Giving only the reprint date, so a 1926 novel appears to be from 2022
• Treating a reprint as a new edition, or a new edition as a reprint
• Quoting a modern introduction and attributing it to the original author
• Copying an original publisher's name from a bibliography instead of from the book's own copyright page
• Taking a Chicago or IEEE reprint format from a citation generator, when neither publishes one

Sources for These Formats

• K10plus union library catalogue record 177452029X for Soldiers' Pay (Dover Publications, 2022), including its republication note, series, ISBN and original-version date
• MLA Style Center, "How do I create a works-cited-list entry for a reprinted book?", citing MLA Handbook, 9th ed., sections 5.108 and 5.114
• University of York Library, Harvard guide, Republished source
• University of Sheffield Library, "Harvard referencing" (based on Cite Them Right) — checked for a republished-source entry and found not to have one
• University of Queensland Library, APA 7th guide, and Murdoch University Library, APA guide: the "(Original work published Year)" element and Murdoch's Readers/Study Guides entries
• The Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide, and Murdoch University Library's Chicago author-date guide — both checked for a reprint entry and found not to have one
• IEEE Reference Guide, books sections — checked for a reprint entry and found not to have one

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE.