Dr. David Monaghan
Professor Emeritus
Research Interests:
Jane Austen and film; contemporary British literature and society
Selected publications:
“‘A cheerful confidence in futurity’: The Movement Motif in Austen’s Novel and Dear/Michell’s Film Adaptation of Persuasion.” Windows on a Woman’s World: Essays for Jocelyn Harris. 2 vols. Edited by Colin Gibson and Lisa Marr. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005. II, 69-92.
The Cinematic Jane Austen: Essays on the Filmic Sensibility of the Novels. McFarland, 2009. (Co-edited with Ariane Hudelet, and John Wiltshire)
“Emma and the Art of Adaptation.” Jane Austen on Screen. Ed. Gina Macdonald and Andrew Macdonald. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 197-227.
The Falklands War: Myth and Countermyth. London: Macmillan, 1998.
Jane Austen: Structure and Social Vision. London: Macmillan, 1980.
“Mrs. Thatcher’s War: The Rise and Fall of an Ideologue.” The Political Legacy of Margaret Thatcher. Ed. Stanislao Pugliese. London: Politico’s Press, 2003. 189-96.
The New Casebooks “Emma.” London: Macmillan, 1992.
The Novels of John le Carré. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.
“Reinventing Fanny Price: Patricia Rozema’s Thoroughly Modern Mansfield Park.” Mosaic 40.3 (Sept. 2007): 85-102.
Obituary
David Monaghan, Emeritus Professor of English, suffered a fatal heart attack on March 8, 2026. He and his life partner, Gail Warriner, were on vacation in Bermuda at the time. Born in Stafford, England, Dr. Monaghan received his PhD from the University of Alberta in 1970 and joined the Mount Saint Vincent University English Department that same year. For thirty-nine years he was an invaluable member not just of the English Department but of the University as a whole. He taught courses in twentieth-century fiction and poetry, detective fiction, and film. He was an internationally recognized Jane Austen scholar, one of the first to write about the film adaptations of Austen’s work. At the same time, he concerned himself with current politics, writing a book about the Falklands war, as well as essays about Margaret Thatcher. A book on the novels of John le Carré was followed by a reader’s guide to the novels, well enough received to be translated into German. A number of his essays were reprinted in later collections. He was a visiting Professor at the universities of Oxford and Kent, among others. His service work for Mount Saint Vincent was exceptional: Chair of the English Department; three-time Faculty Association President and member of the Board of Governors; five-time member of Senate; and member of a staggering number of committees. David’s dour sense of humour led his students to affectionately dub him “Eeyore,” after the morose donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh. His playful side, though, came out in his involvement with the imaginative and sometimes audacious events of the student English Society. He remains a memorable figure in the minds of his students and colleagues.
(Written by colleague Dr. Peter Schwenger, Professor Emeritus in the Mount’s English Department.)
