How do I cite a digitized, multivolume novel when each volume has a separate URL?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

It is generally more useful to create a separate entry for each volume. In the following example, the writer has cited a passage from the second volume of a novel scanned and archived on the website Internet Archive. Since each volume has a separate URL, a works-cited-list entry has been created for each volume. Following the MLA format template, each entry provides the novel’s volume number and publication information in the first container. The second container lists the name of the website and the URL for the volume. The parenthetical citation indicates the volume and page number for the citation:

The narrator of George MacDonald’s David Elginbrod notes that “David was not given to boasting” (2: 160).

Works Cited

MacDonald, George. David Elginbrod. Vol. 1, Hurst and Blackett, 1863. Internet Archivearchive.org/details/davidelginbrod02macdgoog.

---David Elginbrod. Vol. 2, Hurst and Blackett, 1863. Internet Archivearchive.org/details/davidelginbrod03macdgoog.

---David Elginbrod. Vol. 3, Hurst and Blackett, 1863. Internet Archivearchive.org/details/davidelginbrod01macdgoog.

You could also cite the work as a whole and truncate the URL to the host name (e.g., archive.org). Read more about truncating URLs.