Eighteenth Century Collections Online is broken into two parts and offers full text access to nearly every English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, alongside thousands of works published in the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. It consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera. Multiple editions of individual works are offered where they add scholarly value or contain important differences.

Until recently Falvey Library only had access to Part I, this spring we were able to update our access to include Part II. Part II has an emphasis on literature, social science, and religion. Both Parts I & II are accessible through the same link in Databases A-Z and elsewhere on the library’s website and users accessing Eighteenth Century Collections Online do not need to do anything special to search either part as the two are now seamlessly integrated.

If you have any questions about using or accessing Eighteenth Century Collections Online please feel free to contact your subject librarian.

Image courtesy of Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources): The historian’s guide, or, Britains’s [sic] remembrancer. For the last century. Being a summary of all the principal actions, exploits, sieges, battels, designs, … from Anno Dom. 1600. to this present year, 1701.

Sarah Wingo, MA, MSI, is Liaison Librarian for English Lit, Theatre, & Romance Languages at Falvey Memorial Library. 

By Sarah Wingo

On March 16, all of Villanova’s classes went online, and all faculty and staff who were able to were asked to begin working from home. At this time, we were told that the earliest we could expect to come back to campus would be after Easter Break.

We now know we will not be returning this semester—there will be no spring musical, no March Madness, no end of term celebrations, and no in-person commencement ceremonies.

The week before we all went home tension on campus was palpable. You’d pass dozens of students speaking in hushed and anxious tones on the phone to their parents. Faculty friends of mine spoke of seniors breaking into tears in class knowing that their final semester at Villanova would be nothing like they could have ever imagined.

Everyone was anxious and worried.

I personally handle crisis best when I have something to do, some way I can help, something I can plan. So I started thinking it was clear people needed something to look forward to, something to take their minds off the current state of the world, something that could bring us together and create a community that could support each other through this.

When I was in graduate school earning my masters in English (Shakespeare Studies specifically), one of the professors at my school organized Thursday night play readings. These readings were designed to expose us to the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, but they were also a social gathering. People brought wine and baked goods, and the events were fun and silly. This, I thought, could work.

So I contacted two of my friends who are faculty in the theatre department, Dr. Chelsea Phillips, and Dr. Bess Rowen, and proposed my idea: virtual play readings via Zoom with the theatre graduate students. They were in.

The next day, I sent out the following email and asked everyone interested to respond to a poll asking when would be the best time for us to all meet.

Email:

Hello, Lovely Theatre People!

I have a proposal for you. Chelsea, Bess, and I have been trying to think of ways to facilitate socializing while social distancing, and we’ve got an idea, but we’ll need your help for it to work.

What I’m Proposing:

• Renaissance play readings, no Shakespeare allowed.
• We meet once a week via Skype or Zoom (TBA) and together read one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
• We read cold, no preparation, mistakes and mispronunciations welcome.
• Sign up to be assigned a role or just pop in to listen.
• BYO wine/beer/cocktail. [our theatre department is all graduate students]
• We take an intermission to chat and refill.
• Anyone who wants to join is welcome roles to be assigned on a first come first served basis.

Context:

We did this when I was in grad school in England studying Shakespeare in his hometown, granted it was in person. It was such a fun way to get to know other playwrights from Shakespeare’s time and in turn put him in context. Also the plays are readily available through public domain so we don’t have to worry about how to access them. Drinking was not compulsory, but it certainly made the whole thing more fun, and it is meant to be silly and fun, with just a smidge of education thrown in.

When?:

This is the tricky part, finding a day/time, I know many of you have family responsibilities and this may not be possible. Let’s take a poll and see what would work best for everyone.

We had an enthusiastic response, and the following Friday at 7 p.m., a librarian, two theatre professors, and about 12 Villanova theatre students met via Zoom to read A Knight of The Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont, a very silly and fun play wherein a couple of “audience” members storm the stage of a play and take over inserting themselves and their young man servant into the action. The reading lasted for a little over 3 hours and was an absolute delight; it was silly and joyous, and for just a little while the weight of the world lifted, and we were all just sitting in our homes hanging out with friends.

The first reading was a resounding success, and we’re planning to keep them going every Friday for as long as this whole thing lasts. So far we have read Knight of The Burning Pestle, The Maid’s Tragedy, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, The Spanish Tragedy, and John Lyly’s Gallathea .

So how does it work:

• Each week, at the end of the our reading, we announce the following week’s play.
• I find us a good copy of the text to use for the reading
• I create a Zoom meeting
• I write an email including the Zoom link, the text of the play we’ll be using, and a link to that weeks signup sheet in google docs
• I go through the play text and create a casting chart so that we can assign parts and doubling where necessary (early modern plays have a LOT of characters)
• On Friday or Thursday, Dr. Phillips, Dr. Rowen, and I have a Zoom meeting to divvy up roles
• On Friday, night we all gather

I’ve been a librarian at Villanova for what will be seven years this coming August, and one of the things I have come to value the most about Villanova is its focus on community. In these times of uncertainty and isolation, community is more important than ever, and that is exactly what these play readings are providing for our theatre students, for myself, and for our alumni and faculty who join in.

We get to start out the week knowing there is something to look forward to and to plan for, and on Friday night we get to see each other’s smiling faces and spend a few hours in each other’s company laughing and reading a play.

Sarah Wingo, MA, MSI, is the Liaison Librarian for English Lit, Theatre, and Romance Languages at Falvey Memorial Library.

Mango is a personalized, adaptive language-learning experience that provides the tools and guidance you need to expand your language skills, wherever and however you learn best.

Mango covers 70 world languages and dialects, including English as a second language, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and ancient Greek (or even Pirate!) through courses crafted using conversational methodology.

Villanova students, faculty, staff, and alumni now have full access to Mango and can create individual profiles. Creating a personal profile allows users to personalize their experience in Mango whether they are using it online or in the iOS or Android apps, this means you can work through a course on a single language or multiple language and Mango will track your progress and remember where you left off.

How to start using Mango:

• Click on the link in Databases A-Z
• Scroll down to the “Sign Up” button and set up an account using your Villanova email address and password of your choice.
• Mango will then walk you through setting up your profile
• Once you have set up an account and created a profile go to the app store on your phone, search for “Mango,” download the app, and then login using the profile information you previously created.

Sarah Wingo, MSI, is Liaison Librarian for English Literature, Theatre, and Romance Languages at Falvey Memorial Library.

The World Shakespeare Bibliography Online (WSB) is a searchable electronic database consisting of the most comprehensive record of Shakespeare-related scholarship and theatrical productions published or produced worldwide from 1960 to the present. Villanova students can access it through Databases A-Z on Falvey’s website.

If you haven’t ventured over to the WSB in a while you may not be aware that Oxford University Press has taken over publication, as of July 2019. With this change, WSB has undergone some significant cosmetic updates and at least one functional improvement, which will hopefully make the resource easier to navigate.

The most meaningful change for Villanova students is that Falvey’s “Find it” button works for articles in WSB now. Previously WSB was just a bibliography—if someone found an article in it they wanted to check out, they would still need to search for it in Journal Finder or the library’s main search.

When students click on “Find It” now, just like they would to access an article in any of the Library’s other databases, they either be directed to the article or, if Falvey does not have digital access, be given the option to request a scan through interlibrary loan.

Sarah Wingo, MA, MSI, is Liaison Librarian for English Literature, Theatre & Romance Languages at Falvey Memorial Library.

Maybe you’ve got plans with a special someone or maybe February 14th is just another day for you. Whatever your feelings about Valentine’s Day, there’s never a bad time to fall in love with a new book. Below Falvey librarians and staff share a book they have read and loved, or a book that they’re looking forward to getting to know in 2015.

Staff Picks: Books We Love

Book Title: Cat’s Cradle
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Rob LeBlanc loves this book because: It’s a hilarious story about love, religion, people rubbing their feet together, executions on a giant fish hook, and the end of the world! What’s NOT to love!

Book Title: Company of Liars
Author: Karen Maitland

Chris Hallberg loves this book because: Company of Liars was pitched to me as a retelling of The Canterbury Tales and the resemblance is uncanny. This brilliant work of historical fiction is packed with dark secrets, amazing twists, and incredibly accurate details that paint a picture of era of the Black Plague like no other. Follow an unlikely group of travelers through these pages or listen to the audiobook, the narrator delivers an absolutely spellbinding performance.

Book Title: The Book of Strange New Things
Author: Michel Faber

Bill Greene loves this book because: This novel is a successful combination of science fiction and romance. Faber ignores the science to some extent so he can make the romance part work. If you have little knowledge of physics this would not be noticeable to you. I highly recommend this novel.

Book Title: The House at Tyneford (UK Title: The Novel in the Viola)
Author: Natasha Solomons

Sue Ottignon loves this book because: it is an historical fiction, situated in Britain prior to World War II, about the emigration of 2 Jewish sisters escaping Austria in 1938 focusing on the life of one of the sisters as a servant. Fabulous, poignant, suspenseful and in my top 10 best fiction I’ve read.

Book Title: Jane Eyre (1847)
Author: Charlotte Brontë

Dennis Lambert loves this book because: My daughter was assigned Jane Eyre in 11th grade English late last year and she challenged me to read it at the same time. We kept reading at about the same pace, neither of us getting too far ahead of the other. What was really fun was discussing the book with her, comparing our reactions to the characters and the story. Despite a couple of improbable plot twists, it is a very well written and engaging story.

Book Title: Florence Gordon
Author: Brian Morton

Luisa Cywinski loves this book because: There is a strong female lead character, Florence Gordon, who defies social convention and, because of that, reminds me of my mother. I also liked Morton’s development of Florence’s intellectual relationship with her granddaughter. I also loved it because it features libraries and research!

Book Title: La Symphonie Pastorale (The Pastoral Symphony)
Author: André Gide

Barbara Quintiliano loves this book because: La Symphonie Pastorale will always have a special place in my heart as the first novel I ever read in French. Nobel Prize winner (1947) André Gide is a master storyteller, lyrical writer, and an implacable inquisitor of the human heart. In this novelette named after Beethoven’s symphony, of course, a Protestant pastor takes blind, orphaned Gertrude into his home and raises her as one of the family. She eventually regains her sight while he becomes increasingly blind to the nature of his true feelings for her and the heartbreak he is sowing all around him. Available at Falvey in English translation in Two Symphonies (PQ2613.I2I813) and in the collection Eleven Modern Short Novels (PN PN6014.H25), but read it in the original French if you can (PQ2613.I2S9 1970).  

Book Title: Someday, Someday, Maybe
Author: Lauren Graham

Kallie Stahl loves this book because: The witty, uplifting narrative encourages readers to remain positive during that period in life when everything is uncertain.

Book Title: Dataclysm: Who we are (when we think no one’s looking)
Author: Christian Rudder

Linda Hauck loves this book because: What’s not to love about using massive user generated data from online dating sites to uncover social, cultural and political patterns?

Book Title: Trinity
Author: Leon Uris

Joanne Quinn loves this book because: I first read Trinity as a Villanova undergraduate back in the eighties. I remember being swept up in the larger than life story of hero, patriot, and martyr Conor Larkin as he lives from the Irish famine to the Easter Uprising. Brooding, blue-eyed and poetic, I probably pictured Aidan Quinn or Bobby Ewing from Dallas in the role. Still reeling in love in ’96, I was able to convince my husband that we name our son Conor.

Book Title: Nine Days to Istanbul
Author: Jeanne Frankel de Corrales

Becky Whidden loves this book because: Nine Days to Istanbul is the true story of the journey of Jeanne Frankel de Corrales and her mother across Europe by train on a pilgrimage to Haifa. She endures snow storms that strand the train, diminishing food and water sources, packs of hungry wolves and the tribulations that present themselves to a woman traveling unaccompanied to this region of the world in the 1950s.
I love this book because I found it quite by accident. It is the first book in the survival/real-life adventure genre that I read. It made me want to read others like Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage/Alfred Lansing, The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride/Daniel James Brown, Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde/Brad Dimock, and more modern tales like The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air/ Jon Krakauer, North to the Night/Alvah Simon.

Staff Picks: Books We’re Looking forward to reading

Book Title: The Mirror and the Light
Author: Hilary Mantel

Sarah Wingo is looking forward to reading this book because: The Mirror and the Light will be the final book in Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and is slated to be published in 2015. The first two books in the series are are Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Both won the Man Booker Prize, in 2009 and 2012 respectively, making Mantel the first woman to win twice. Set in Tudor England and with Mantel’s command of prose and unflinching attention to historical detail, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies easily rank among my top ten books of all time.

Sarah Wingo is the team leader for the Humanities II team and the subject librarian for English and theater.

Article by Sarah Wingo, team leader- Humanities II, subject librarian for English, literature and theatre.

1 Day Till Christmas

“Trust” by Gerald Dierkes
Read by Gerald Dierkes
Submitted by Gerald Dierkes

Gerald Dierkes is an information services specialist, and one of three Falvey staff members to submit one of their own poems for the Advent calendar.

With this final post I would like to thank everyone who has followed along with our Advent calendar as we made our way towards Christmas, my colleagues for contributing their favorite poems, especially my colleagues who bravely shared their own beautiful work with us, and our graduate assistant Michelle for working with me to get each one of these posts up on our blog.

I hope you enjoy our final poem, written and read by Gerald Dierkes, a reflection on trust.

Trust

Joseph, Mary’s husband, did you feel shocked
to learn of Mary’s unplanned pregnancy?
_____________________________Betrayed
by her apparent infidelity
so soon after your commitment to each other?
_____________________________Confused
by Mary’s joy in anticipating her child’s birth?
_____________________________Overwhelmed
by her implausible explanation?
_____________________________Love
as you protected her from legal consequences
of her alleged adultery?
_____________________________Duty
as you accepted responsibility for her child?
_____________________-_______Judged
by your neighbors in your small community?
_____________________________Puzzled
by God’s plan?
_____Why didn’t God arrange things differently?

When Caesar Augustus’ decree forced you to
leave your home in Galilee,
journey to Bethlehem, and
cause Mary to travel in the ninth month of her pregnancy and
give birth away from her home, away from her family, did you ask,
_____Why didn’t God time things differently?

When you sought shelter at an inn for your obviously pregnant wife
—and were refused—
did you think, What gives, God? I’m trying to follow your will, aren’t I?
You persevered, though, finding a shelter for animals in which Mary could give birth,
without her mother, without a midwife, with only you at her side.
Mary did give birth, and God’s Son was born into our world.
_____Why didn’t God plan things differently?

Mere days later, the angel again directed you to change your plans,
this time fleeing to Egypt for an unspecified length of time,
causing your father, Jacob, and Mary’s mother, Ann, to wait years before seeing their grandson.
_____Why didn’t God do things differently?

Did you expect God’s will to be predictable, logical (by human standards), and non-challenging?
Did you ever pause, in your struggle to trust God, to consider how much He trusts you?

2 Days Till Christmas

“Fra Moses And The Flowers” by Eleanor C. Donnelly
Read by Sarah Wingo
Submitted by Laura Bang

Laura Bang is Falvey’s Digital and Special Collections Curatorial Assistant, and she is found this wonderful historical poem to share. This poem comes from page 2 of the first issue of The Villanova Monthly, from January 1893. The Villanova Monthly was the first student newspaper, running from 1893-1897. Returning after a hiatus in 1916, the paper was renamed The Villanovan.

The poem itself is by Eleanor C. Donnelly (1838-1917), a local Philadelphia Catholic poet. Falvey has digitized the Eleanor C. Donnelly Papers from the American Catholic Historical Society, which can be viewed in our Digital Library.

3 Days Till Christmas

little tree, by: E.E. Cummings
Read by Alan Davis Drake
Submitted by Melanie Wood

Melanie Wood is Falvey’s Academic Integration Technical Specialist. This poem is, to me, a simple and sweet reminder to take notice of and appreciate the beauty of the little things in life.

little tree, by: E.E. Cummings

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don’t be afraid

look the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i’ll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you’re quite dressed

you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they’ll stare!

oh but you’ll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we’ll dance and sing

“Noel Noel”

9 Days Till Christmas

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson
Read by Jean Aked
Submitted by Laura Matthews

Laura Matthews is Falvey’s Library Events and Outreach specialist, and she submitted “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” saying,

“Although somewhat cliché, I like Emily Dickinson. It seems like she was a real legit lady that didn’t care what other people thought. I like that. My mom introduced me to this poem several years ago. I like it because hope is such a magical thing and when I read this poem it makes my heart smile.”

I too like Emily Dickinson very much, and I’m pleased to share this poem on our advent calendar.

Read by Jean Aked:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.