 The frill-necked monarch was first described in 1895 by English ornithologist and ex-clergyman Charles Walter De Vis, from a specimen collected by Kendall Broadbent that year.However, undescribed specimens had existed in the Macleay Museum in Sydney and the National Museum in Melbourne for twenty years beforehand.The first eggs were collected by H. G. Barnard the following year in Somerset, Cape York.