Whitman and Wilde Part 1: Walt Whitman in New York, 1855

The New York world that Walt Whitman knew as a young man in the 1850's was really two cities - that of New York (which was only today's Manhattan) and the growing city of Brooklyn across the East River.  These two cities in the midst of pre-Civil War and pre-Gilded Age development inspired the young Whitman to give voice to a new America and new experience.  

In this first episode of a two-part series, writer and historian Hugh Ryan ("When Brooklyn Was Queer") talks about just how revolutionary Whtman's "Leaves of Grass" was, and just how Whitman would have defined his same-sex attractions, which had not yet evolved into the concepts of sexuality and gender identification that we know today.   

This unique episode includes a look at the New York and Brooklyn that Whitman knew. Hugh contributes his own perspective and insight into just what that famous meeting between the older Whitman and the younger Oscar Wilde years later might have been like.