What to read after Jane Wilde?

This new book reclaims Jane Wilde as a significant poet, scholar, essayist, translator and social commentator.

Jane Wilde (1826 - 1898) - née Jane Francesca Elgee - was the mother of Oscar Wilde, but Eibhear Walshe shows that she was a notable poet, translator, and political pamphlet writer in her own right. Born in Wexford, she contributed to The Nation under the name of 'Speranza', and issued a call to arms on behalf of the Young Irelanders. She translated Lamartine's French Revolution (1850) and Dumas's Glacier Love (1852). Her salon with her husband Sir William Wilde was a key centre for artists, academics, and visiting dignitaries. Lady Wilde moved to London after his death.

Highly regarded as a writer and a scholar in her own lifetime, the reputation of Jane Wilde suffered greatly with her son's disgrace. He was himself keenly aware of the impressive nature of her achievements. Writing in his prison testament De Profundis, he said that "She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation."

The work offers a short chronological study of the life and the writings of Jane Wilde, dealing with her education, her career as political activist and editor of The Nation, and as revolutionary and translator. It draws on her own writings and her recently published letters to give an account of her working life, her place within mid-nineteenth century Irish cultural nationalism and her relationship with other leading writers of her time. The book includes an extensive bibliography and a chronology of her life.