Sample Annotated Bibliography Entry for the Hawthorne Paper

Turner, Arlin.  Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Biography.  N.Y.: Oxford UP, 1980.

        Turner covers both Hawthorne's life and the production of his works, showing how NH's early life in a household surrounded by women shaped his attitudes toward gender, and his struggles to make a career as a writer may have given him ideas that led to stories about young men trying to get their education, first jobs, etc.  The book is divided into chapters based on where Hawthorne was living at the time and stages in his publishing career.  The most important for the early short stories are probably "Preparing for College" and "The Manning Years," but the later chapters on his marriage to Sophia Peabody and the births of his first children would be important to "Rappaccini's Daughter."  This book is on closed reserve for English 105.009.  Ask for it at the Circulation Desk.

        This example shows researchers on Hawthorne several possible uses for the book, though it cannot be exhaustive without also being too long.  Try to keep these notes short, about a paragraph.  Make sure, though, to think about what uses creative Hawthorne researchers might make of the article or book you have chosen.  This is one of the points where "academic writing" is truly "creative," as well.  Click here for a not-so-good example of the absolute minimum information one can provide while still doing some good for researchers in an annotated bibliography on R. W. Emerson  The entries are not terrible, but they're incomplete and the brevity of the notes conceals a lot.  Note, for instance, what is concealed from you by its numerous MLA format errors. Note how old some of the print sources are, and how vague and non-scholarly the internet sources are.  At least one is no longer available because the entire commercial web network on which it resided has disappeared.  What more could such a resource tell us, and how might your annotation also provide that kind of information?  Remember to ask your instructor if you are having difficulty using any research resource.