Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was born in the Basque region of what is now Spain in 1490 and died at Rome in 1556. He was one of a remarkable group of men and women who decisively influenced the Catholic Church at the dawn of the modern era.
Late in life Ignatius dictated an account of his life up to the founding of the Society of Jesus. It has been published as his Autobiography. The account, together with the text of the Spiritual Exercises and a number of Ignatius' letters, has been republished recently in a handy paperback, St Ignatius Loyola: Personal Writings (Penguin). The texts of the Spiritual Exercises and some of Ignatius's noteworthy letters can now be found online, as well.
There are a number of biographies of St. Ignatius. Probably the best approach to his life to begin with is the so-called Autobiography of St. Ignatius. There are various translations and editions of the autobiography, the most accessible of which can be found in Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, edited by George E. Ganss, S.J. This is a translation by Parmananda R. Divarkar and the Penguin edition mentioned above. While the autobiography is fragmented, it gives a retrospective narrative on the origins and development of Ignatius's religious vocation. There are sections that are invaluable for an understanding of the discernment of spirits, the centrality of mission in the Society of Jesus and the centrality of personal religious experience in the Spiritual Exercises.
There are three biographies that are accessible and readable. One is The First Jesuit: St. Ignatius Loyola, by Mary Purcell (Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1981-original edition, 1957). The second one is Ignatius of Loyola, The Pilgrim Saint by Jose Ignacio Tellechea Idigoras, translated with a preface by Cornelius Michael Buckley, S.J. (Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1994). And the third is Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits: His Life and Works, by Candido de Dalmases, translated by Jerome Aixala (St. Louis Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, 1985). Of these three volumes, the second is by far the most pleasant to read. It gives a solid religious and cultural portrait of Ignatius written by a Basque non-Jesuit with sensitivity and wit. Much of what he presents is a gloss on the autobiography of St. Ignatius, and therefore it is helpful to read this volume along with the autobiography. Mary Purcell's volume is also readable. Her appendix (pages 273-278) is a helpful summary of the various biographies of Ignatius that were disseminated after his death. John W. O'Malley, S.J. correctly calls de Dalmases concise and factually reliable.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), a product of Jesuit education at Cologne, was a close friend of the Jesuit order. His "Pictorial Biography of Saint Ignatius Loyola" is available in a delightful volume entitled Constructing a Saint Through Images (St. Joseph's University Press, Philadelphia, 2008).
While Loyola's Acts: The Rhetoric of the Self, by Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997) has a number of idiosyncratic features, it is an important critique of the autobiography.
There are a couple of editions of the other works of Ignatius that are worth knowing about, especially for their introductions and notes: Commentaries on the Letters and Spiritual Diary of St. Ignatius Loyola by Simon Decloux (Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, Rome, 1982) and The Spiritual Journal of St. Ignatius Loyola, translated by William J. Young (Woodstock College Press, Woodstock, (Maryland), 1958).
The standard edition in English of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus is translated with an introduction and commentary by George E. Ganss, published by The Institute of Jesuit Sources (St. Louis, 1970).
Dated but invaluable as a background for understanding Ignatius and Jesuit spirituality is the English translation of Joseph de Guibert's The Jesuits: Their Spiritual Doctrine and Practice--A Historical Study, translated by William J. Young, S.J. and edited by George E. Ganss, S.J. (The Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, 1964). While de Guibert has been criticized as writing what is sometimes called "court history," the introduction and Part 1 of his work present a tradition that is important to understand in evaluating the revolutionary work that John W. O'Malley has done in The First Jesuits (Harvard University Press, 1993). O'Malley built on the older tradition of hagiography and spirituality to present a picture not so much of Jesuit thought but of what Jesuits were doing. In a real sense, O'Malley's book is a historical presentation of what we mean by the "Ignatian way of proceeding."
More venturesome souls may be interested in Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint, by W.W. Meissner, S.J., M.D., a member of the Boston College Theology faculty who is a psychoanalyst and writer about psychology and religion. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
A rich and immensely rewarding volume is The Jesuits: Cultures, Science and the Arts 1540-1773, edited by John W. O'Malley, S.J et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). This volume represents the papers that were given at an international conference by the same name held at Boston College in May 1997. The essays take a variety of approaches, ranging form mathematics and science, to art and music. However, there is a focus in the volume, namely, how from the very beginning the Jesuits both engaged culture and were engaged by their cultures so that this mutuality of influences created something that was unique in the personality of religious orders within the Catholic Church. Among the essays that would be extremely helpful for people in higher education are those by O'Malley on the historiography of the Society of Jesus today, Steven Harris on mapping Jesuit sciences, T. Frank Kennedy on Candide and a Boat, Andrew Ross on Alessandro Valignano, Francis Clooney on Roberto de Nobili's Dialogue on Eternal Life, and Gauvin Bailey's "The Truth-Showing Mirror".
Through the years there has been a number of individual studies that trace the influences on St. Ignatius from the culture and the piety of his day. An older volume but still extremely valuable is Ignatius of Loyola, His Personality and Spiritual Heritage, 1556-1956, edited by Friedrich Wulf, S. J. (The Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, 1977). This volume is a symposium of scholarly and document studies in which a number of outstanding German Jesuits collaborated. Among these Jesuits are Hugo and Karl Rahner. Especially helpful for an educator is the article on "Elements of Crusade Spirituality" by Hans Wolter, S.J., "Toward the History of Ignatius' Teaching on the Discernment of Spirits", by Hugo Rahner, and "The Ignatian Process for Discovering the Will of God in an Existential Situation," by Karl Rahner. These essays are both important and helpful because they summarize scholarship in relevant areas up to 1956.
In more recent times, there have been studies on individual Jesuits from the early period of the Society. The most monumental of these is Georg Schurhammer's, Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, a four volume work published in Rome in 1973 and again in 1982. The introduction of the first volume is a masterful summary of the early life of the early Jesuits and well worth any time given to it.
Two more recent volumes are those that have been written by William V. Bangert: Claude Jay and Alfonso Salmeron, Two Early Jesuits, (Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1985) and Jerome Nadal, S.J. 1507-1580, Tracking the First Generation of Jesuits (Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1992).