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“Thus we launch into this formidable frozen sea”

IrishCentral Contributor Larry McLaughlin looks at the life of Irish writer and nationalist Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, the mother of Oscar Wilde.

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 Ja...