Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (née Elgee; 27 December 1821 – 3 February 1896)[1] was an Irish poet who wrote under the pen name Speranza[2] and supporter of the nationalist movement.

Jane was the youngest of four children of the couple, her older siblings being Emily, John, and Frances (died as an infant) She claimed that her great-grandfather was an Italian surnamed Algiati [4] which was said to be a derived from Alighieri thus inferring a relationship with the famous poet.

This ancestor was said to have had come to Wexford in the 18th century; in fact, the Elgees descended from Durham labourers who had gained prosperity as builders and bricklayers and then in succeeding generations became part of the gentry.

[5] Her maternal aunt Emily was married to the author Charles Maturin though his death two years before her own birth precluded her ever meeting him, but whose bust Jane would display in her home as an adult.

After the birth of her daughter Isola, Jane made the acquaintance of the Swedish noblewoman Charlotte "Lotten" von Krämer[9] who was one of her husbands patients.

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.

[11] In January 1896 Lady Wilde contracted bronchitis and, dying, asked for permission to see Oscar, who was imprisoned in Reading Gaol.

It was claimed that her "fetch" (i.e. her apparition) appeared in Oscar's prison cell as she died at her home, 146 Oakley Street, Chelsea, on 3 February 1896.

In 1996 she was memorialised in the form of a plaque on the grave of Sir William Wilde in Dublin as 'Speranza of The Nation, writer, translator, poet and nationalist, author of works on Irish folklore, early advocate of equality for women, and founder of a leading literary salon'.

(It is located at grid square 147 – Cambridge Avenue South (near Canalside), set back 20 metres from the curved path – opposite SQ.148.)

Lady Wilde was the niece of Charles Maturin and wrote for the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, publishing poems in The Nation under the pseudonym of Speranza.

The authorities at Dublin Castle shut down the paper and brought Charles Duffy to court but he refused to name the person who had written the offending article.

She praised the passing of the Married Women's Property Act of 1883, which prevented a woman from having to enter marriage 'as a bond slave, disenfranchised of all rights over her fortune'.