Jane Wilde

Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (née Elgee; 27 December 1821 – 3 February 1896) was an Irish poet under the pen name Speranza and supporter of the nationalist movement. Lady Wilde had a special interest in Irish folktales, which she helped to gather and was the mother of Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde. Personal life Jane was the last of the four children of Charles Elgee (1783–1824), the son of Archdeacon John Elgee, a Wexford solicitor, and his wife Sarah (née Kingsbury, d. 1851). Her father died when she was three years old which meant she was largely self-educated. Even so, she is said to have mastered 10 languages by the age of 18. She claimed that her great-grandfather was an Italian who had come to Wexford in the 18th century; in fact, the Elgees descended from Durham labourers. On 12 November 1851 she married Sir William Wilde, an eye and ear surgeon (and also a researcher of folklore), in St. Peter's church in Dublin, and they had three children: William Charles Kingsbury Wilde (26 September 1852 – 13 March 1899), Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), and Isola Francesca Emily Wilde (2 April 1857 – 23 February 1867). Her eldest son William Wilde became a journalist and poet, her younger son Oscar Wilde became a prolific and famous writer, and her daughter Isola Wilde died in childhood of a fever. Jane was the grandmother of Oscar's sons Cyril and Vyvyan Holland, and of Willie's daughter Dorothy Wilde. When her husband died in 1876, the family discovered that he was virtually bankrupt. Jane Wilde - now Lady Wilde, following the knighting of her husband in 1864 - joined her sons in London in 1879. She lived with her older son in poverty, supplementing their meagre income by writing for fashionable magazines and producing books based on the research of her late husband into Irish folklore. She wrote several books including 'Ancient legends, mystic charms, and superstitions of Ireland' (1887). Her poems are said to have influenced her son Oscar's own work. For example, his 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' has been compared to her poem 'The Brothers' (based on a true story of a trial and execution in the 1798 Rebellion).