The Library has a large collection of reference works, most of them in electronic format, but some classics are still only available in print. Use the custom search box below to search across most of the Library's electronic encyclopedias, handbooks, and companions.




Bloomsbury History: Theory & Method
Presents a wide and growing selection of essays on theory, methods and historiography including the four-volume survey Historiography: Critical Readings edited by Q. Edward Wang.

Cambridge Companions Online (Cambridge University Press)
Scholarly introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods.

Cambridge Histories Online (Cambridge University Press)
Search across all the Cambridge Histories or browse individual volumes.

Gale eBooks
A large collection of academic encyclopedias and dictionaries by various publishers.

Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press)  Tutorial
Presents peer-reviewed, annotated bibliographies and expert commentary on current scholarship in selected disciplines.

Oxford Handbooks Online (Oxford University Press)
Provides digital access in selected disciplines. Each handbook introduces and surveys the state of scholarship in a field of study through review articles written by leading subject specialists. Articles review key issues and debates and set the agenda for new research. Villanova University does not have access to the complete collection. Access print handbooks through the Library's print collection and/or interlibrary loan services.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias (Oxford University Press)
Offers peer-reviewed topical introductions and literature reviews written by well-regarded authorities. Available subjects include African history, American history, Asian history, and Latin American history. New topics are regularly added.

Wiley Online Library
Provides full text access to Wiley publications covering life, health, and physical sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.

ONLINE RESOURCES GATEWAY

Featured Resources

BBC Shakespeare Plays
Features a series of television adaptations from the 1980s, digitally remastered and streamed in their entirety as well as act by act. Includes image galleries with stills for each production that permit close scrutiny of costumes and scenery.

Cambridge Companions Online (Cambridge University Press)
Provides access to the complete collection of Cambridge Companions, a series of authoritative guides to subject- or theme-based essay collections, written by leading experts. Areas covered include literature, classics, philosophy, religion, culture and music.

Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press)  Tutorial
Presents peer-reviewed, annotated bibliographies and expert commentary on current scholarship in selected disciplines. Villanova University has access to the following bibliographies: African American Studies, Art History, Atlantic History, Biblical Studies, British and Irish Literature, Buddhism, Cinema and Media Studies, Classics, Communication, Criminology, Environmental Science, Geography, International Relations, Islamic Studies, Latin American Studies, Management, Medieval Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Renaissance and Reformation, and Victorian Literature.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias (Oxford University Press)
Offers peer-reviewed topical introductions and literature reviews written by well-regarded authorities. Available in selected subject areas. New topics are regularly added.

 Databases and Citation Indexes

 Digital text collections

 Selected Online Resources

 Streamed Video Collections

 

INDEX OF NOTABLE AUTHORS AND ANONYMOUS WORKS
WITH LINKS TO LIBRARY CATALOG

Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron, 1834-1902.
Aeschylus.
Ambrose, Saint, Bishop of Milan, d. 397.
Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033-1109.
Apuleius.
Aristophanes.
Aristotle.
Auden, W. H., 1907-1973.
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, 354-430.
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817.

Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626.
Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 1905-1988.
Baptista, Mantuanus, 1448-1516.
Barfield, Owen, 1898-1997.
Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867.
Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989.
Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953.
Benedict XVI, Pope (née Joseph Ratzinger, b. 1927).
Benson, Robert Hugh, 1871-1914.
Beowulf, and other Old English epic poetry.
Berry, Wendell, b. 1934.
Blake, William, 1757-1827.
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375.
Boethius, d. 524.
Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986.
Bouyer, Louis, 1913-2004.
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956.
Brontë, Anne, 1820-1849.
Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855.
Brontë, Emily, 1818-1848.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861.
Browning, Robert, 1812-1889.
Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797.
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824.

Calvino, Italo, 1923-1985.
Camus, Albert, 1913-1960.
Cather, Willa, 1873-1947.
Catullus, Gaius Valerius.
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400.
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904.
Chesterton, G. K. 1874-1936.
Chopin, Kate, 1850-1904.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889.
Colum, Padraic, 1881-1972.
Congar, Yves, 1904-1995.
Congreve, William, 1670-1729.
Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924.
Corneille, Pierre, 1606-1684.

Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321.
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Day, Dorothy, 1897-1980.
Dekker, Thomas, ca. 1572-1632.
Descartes, René, 1596-1650.
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886.
Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784.
Dillard, Annie, b. 1945.
Dinesen, Isak (née Karen Blixen, 1885-1962).
Donne, John, 1572-1631.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.
Dryden, John, 1631-1700.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1868-1963.

Eddas, Norse (incl. Snorri Sturluson, 1179?-1241).
Eliot, George, 1819-1880.
Eliot, T. S. 1888-1965.
Epictetus.
Erasmus, Desiderius, d. 1536.
Euclid.
Euripides.
Everyman, and other English morality plays.

Faulkner, William, 1897-1962.
Federalist Papers, The.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1896-1940.
Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880.
Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984.
Francis, de Sales, Saint, 1567-1622.
Francis, Pope (née Jorge Bergoglio, b. 1936).
Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.
Frye, Northrop, 1912-1991.

Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642.
Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald, 1877-1964.
Gilson, Etienne, 1884-1978.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832.
Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich, 1809-1852.
Gordimer, Nadine, 1923-2014.
Grass, Günter, 1927-2015.
Greene, Graham, 1904-1991.
Gregory, Lady, 1852-1932.
Guardini, Romano, 1885-1968.

Heaney, Seamus, 1939-2013.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831.
Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976.
Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961.
Herbert, George, 1593-1633.
Herodotus.
Hesiod.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 1907-1972.
Hesse, Hermann, 1877-1962.
Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770-1843.
Homer.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844-1889.
Horace.
Hume, David, 1711-1776.
Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891-1960.
Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938.
Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963.

Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906.

James, Henry, 1843-1916.
John of the Cross, Saint, 1542-1591.
John Paul II, Pope (née Karol Wojtyla, 1920-2005).
Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784.
Joyce, James, 1882-1941.
Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343.
Juvenal.

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924.
Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.
Keats, John, 1795-1821.
Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373.
Kermode, Frank, 1919-2010.
Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855.
Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott, 1888-1957.
Kuhn, Thomas S., 1922-1996.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.
León, Luis de, 1528?-1591.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 1729-1781.
Lewis, C. S. 1898-1963.
Livy.
Locke, John, 1632-1704.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882.
Vega, Lope de, 1562-1635.
Lubac, Henri de, 1896-1991.
Lucan.
Lucian, of Samosata.
Lucretius Carus, Titus.
Lyly, John, 1554?-1606.

MacDonald, George, 1824-1905.
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527.
Maimonides, Moses, 1135-1204.
Mann, Thomas, 1875-1955.
Marcel, Gabriel, 1889-1973.
Marguerite, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of Navarre, 1492-1549.
Maritain, Jacques, 1882-1973.
Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593.
Martial.
Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678.
Marx, Karl, 1818-1883.
Maugham, W. Somerset 1874-1965.
Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893.
Mauriac, François, 1885-1970.
Melville, Herman, 1819-1891.
Menander, of Athens.
Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873.
Miller, Arthur, 1915-2005.
Milton, John, 1608-1674.
Molière, 1622-1673.
Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592.
More, Thomas, Sir, Saint, 1478-1535.
Morris, William, 1834-1896.
Murdoch, Iris, 1919-1999.

Nash, Thomas, 1567-1601.
Newman, John Henry, 1801-1890.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Novalis, 1772-1801.

O'Connor, Flannery, 1925-1964.
O'Neill, Eugene, 1888-1953.
Orwell, George, 1903-1950.
Ovid.

Pascal, Blaise, 1623-1662.
Pearl, Gawain poems, and other Middle English romances.
Percy, Walker, 1916-1990.
Petrarch (Petrarca, Francesco, 1304-1374).
Petronius Arbiter.
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 1463-1494.
Pieper, Josef, 1904-1997.
Pinckaers, Servais, 1925-2008.
Pindar.
Pinter, Harold, 1930-2008.
Plato.
Plautus, Titus Maccius
Plotinus.
Plutarch.
Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744.
Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972.
Pre-Socratic philosophers.
Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite.
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837.

Rabelais, François, ca. 1490-1553.
Racine, Jean, 1639-1699.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926.
Rimbaud, Arthur, 1854-1891.
Ronsard, Pierre de, 1524-1585.
Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 1830-1894.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778.
Ruskin, John, 1819-1900.

Sartre, Jean Paul, 1905-1980.
Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886-1967.
Sayers, Dorothy L. 1893-1957.
Schiller, Friedrich, 1759-1805.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1768-1834.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, ca. 4 B.C.-65 A.D.
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.
Shaw, Bernard, 1856-1950.
Sheed, F. J. 1897-1981.
Sheed, Wilfrid, 1930-2011.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822.
Sidney, Philip, Sir, 1554-1586.
Smith, Adam, 1723-1790.
Solzhenit︠s︡yn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918-2008.
Song of Roland, and other French epic poetry.
Sophocles.
Spark, Muriel, 1918-2006.
Speyr, Adrienne von, 1902-1967.
Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677 (i.e., Baruch Spinoza).
Stein, Edith, Saint, 1891-1942 (i.e., Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross).
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
Stendhal, 1783-1842.
Stoppard, Tom, b. 1937.
Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745.

Tacitus, Cornelius.
Tate, Allen, 1899-1979.
Taylor, Charles M., b. 1931.
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892.
Terence.
Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274.
Thompson, Francis, 1859-1907.
Thucydides.
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1892-1973.
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910.
Torres Naharro, Bartolomé de, fl. 1517.
Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882.
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883.

Undset, Sigrid, 1882-1949.

Vicente, Gil, ca. 1470-ca. 1536.
Vico, Giambattista, 1668-1744.
Virgil.
Voltaire, 1694-1778.
Von Hildebrand, Dietrich, 1889-1977.

Ward, Maisie, 1889-1975.
Waugh, Evelyn, 1903-1966.
Weber, Max, 1864-1920.
Weil, Simone, 1909-1943.
Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001.
Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937.
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900.
Williams, Charles, 1886-1945.
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941.
Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850.

Yeats, W. B. 1865-1939.