By Irish America Staff Appearing before an Irish-American group in St. Paul, Minnesota on St. Patrick’s Day, 1882, Oscar Wilde was introduced not as a rising literary star, but as “the son of one of Ireland’s noblest daughters — of a daughter who in the troublous times of 1848 by the works of her pen and her noble example did much to keep the fire of patriotism burning brightly.” Oscar may have been surprised by such enthusiasm, but it was no overstatement — long before he dazzled audiences and critics with his own writing, the inflammatory patriotic poetry of his mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde — familiarly known as “Speranza” — had made her a hero of Irish nationalists across the world. Until his most famous works made him a household name in his own right, Oscar Wilde, as the New York newspaper