Jane wilde ones2/16/2024 ![]() This call to revolt against British rule was not a once-off, and indeed her writing was often seditious in nature. Perhaps the most famous of her poems was The Famine Year, published in 1847, in which she attacked the British political establishment for creating the conditions that allowed famine to ravage rural Ireland, and called the peasantry to revolt: “Once I had caught the national spirit, all the literature of Irish wrongs and sufferings had an enthralling interest for me,” she declared, “then it was that I discovered that I could write poetry”. She chose ‘Speranza’, the Italian word for hope.Īt first, she used her knowledge of languages to produce translations of continental revolutionary poems, but she was soon contributing her own poems as well. She accepted and, as was the case with all contributors to the paper, she was required to choose a pen name. He made contact with Wilde and offered her work. He recognised the journalistic potential of ‘John Fansworth Ellis’, the pseudonym she chose for her letter. Despite her unionist background, Jane Wilde was almost immediately taken in by this thinking.Ī passionate letter she wrote to The Nation struck a chord with Duffy, the paper’s editor. ![]() Their ideals were centred around an inclusive nationalism, one that ignored ethnic and religious divisions. The paper was set up when they were part of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association, but all three would break from the Association when Young Ireland shifted from a tendency within O’Connell’s reformist grouping to a standalone revolutionary organisation. She began reading his poetry in The Nation, a nationalist paper set up by Davis and two other prominent members of Young Ireland, Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon. Like Wilde, Davis was a poet – and a Protestant. At least, not until she witnessed the funeral of Thomas Davis, a leader of the Young Ireland movement. However, in spite of her interest in learning – and her family’s deeply held political ideals – politics did not remotely capture her interest. She read extensively, having a particular interest in languages – by the time she was 18, she was fluent in ten. This lack of formal education did not deter her. Her father died when she was just three, and her mother was left with insufficient funds to provide the type of education to young Jane that would normally have been accessible to someone of her class and social standing. Her family were deeply conservative, and staunchly unionist. She was born Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee in 1821, in Wexford. Such is the case with Jane Wilde, mother of famous playwright and poet, Oscar Wilde. All too often the fame of an individual overshadows the remarkable stories and achievements of their family.
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