Jack Donovan

Jack joined the department in 1973 and worked here until his retirement in 2008. He was a distinguished scholar of the Romantic period with an international reputation for his work on Percy Shelley, and the solo and collaborative volumes which he contributed to the Longman Poems of Shelley and his Penguin Classics edition of Shelley's Selected Poems and Prose (produced with Cian Duffy) will be appreciated for years to come.

As a scholar and teacher, Jack's legacies to the department include the still flourishing Literature of the Romantic Period MA which he helped to introduce and which attracted some of the many postgraduate students that he supervised. His legacy today is also evident through his commitment to the teaching of foreign literatures, which remains an integral part of our undergraduate degree. Jack's Francophilia probably explains his fondness for Wenger-era Arsenal F.C. He was always as happy to chat about the football as about the more highbrow interests customarily associated with literature academics, and his sociability, warmth, and personal generosity underpinned all aspects of his work in the department, from his undergraduate and postgraduate teaching to pastoral supervision and administration.

Students praised Jack as an inspiring teacher with a knack for gently nudging them to do better, and staff who worked with Jack will remember among many other things the skilful way in which, as Chair of the Board of Studies, as well as in other major roles, he helped the department to negotiate some significant challenges within the university (such as a major restructuring of degree programmes) and the world of Higher Education (the arrival of the RAE and the NSS), all the while putting such upheaval in its proper perspective. Jack embraced the role of mentor to junior staff, and, showing his typical concern for others, would regularly host dinners that brought new staff and established colleagues together. In the words of one current member of staff, Jack was 'an exemplar of what departmental kindness, wisdom and diplomacy should be like'. He will be greatly missed by all those who had the privilege to work with him, and all in the department extend their deepest sympathies to his wife Judy.