Overview

This is the first contemporary edition of the poetry of Jane Wilde, née Elgee, who also wrote as Speranza. Speranza was, in her time, renowned worldwide, with essays, poetry and translated work published in Ireland, England, America and beyond. She was a key figure in the nationalist Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, and her poetry records the hardship experienced by the Irish people - famine and migration in particular. She was also an early advocate for women’s rights, who campaigned for the admission of women to higher education. This edition, which contains several previously unpublished poems, will make the poetry of this emblematic figure in nineteenth-century Irish writing accessible to a contemporary audience for the first time.

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9781836240372

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Eibhear [Walshe] did much in his career to direct attention to neglected areas of Oscar Wilde’s life and legacy, including his cultural afterlife in Ireland, and the shameful and mysterious Mary Travers incident. This volume is a continuation of that vital work and serves as a fitting tribute to his scholarship. [...] [W]ith this new edition Eleanor Fitzsimons secures her position as one of the leading Wildean scholars working today. Indeed, Walshe credits Fitzsimons with the hard work of tracing the literary history of each poem included in the collection. [...] By collecting so many of her poems in one volume Walshe and Fitzsimons have done Wildeans a great service, as together these poems reveal more not just about the complicated and talented woman who largely raised Oscar Wilde, but also about the kind of world view with which he grew up.' Jarlath Killeen, The Wildean

Author Information

Eibhear Walshe (1962-2024) was a biographer and novelist, as well as Director of Creative Writing at University College Cork. Eleanor Fitzsimons is a biographer and researcher and the author of Wilde's Women. She is an honorary patron of the Oscar Wilde Society.

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