At first glance, it would seem that there could be no two more different poets writing in

English than Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.

But given a closer look, they may have been more similar than we might think at first glance.

Walt Whitman's New York was the burgeoning seafaring merchant culture of Brooklyn and Manhattan of the 1850s pre-Civil War.

The New York that Oscar Wilde first met when he stepped off a ship in 1882 was a city in the throes of the gilded age,

full of a level of wealth that seemingly appeared overnight,

and with an increasing idea that anyone could do anything

as long as they had a large purse and a large personality.

In our last episode, Part 1 of Whitman and Wild, we took a look at how Walt Whitman and New York

met each other at a particularly opportune time for both, a young ambitious poet seeking fame

and a city in a country ready to be reflected and represented by new language and new verse.

This episode moves the story forward and focuses on a similar moment, and another poet, who

was to become one of the greatest writers in English

and a city that was not only ready to receive him, but to promote not only his work, but his

personality. The fact that Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde did in fact not only meet each other,

but exchanged philosophies of art and fame

illustrates how by the gilded age at the end of the 19th century, America was able to create

the very modern idea of celebrity that we see in our media today.

Music Hello, I'm Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast,

where every two weeks we journey into corners light and dark for a look at America's gilded age, France's Belle-Puc, and England's late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

The ship, on which Oscar Wilde sailed from England, docked in New York Harbor on January 2nd, 1882.

Unable to clear quarantine until the next day, Oscar's first night in New York was spent

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