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Robert Shaplen(1917–1988) began reporting in the Pacific theater during World War Two and became one of America’s most influential experts on East Asia in the postwar era. He was Far East correspondent for the New Yorker from 1962 to 1978, and remained a New Yorker staff writer for the rest of his life. He published ten books, including one novel and one story collection. Free Love (originally titled Free Love and Heavenly Sinners) was his only foray into nineteenth-century American history. Louis Menand is an award-winning essayist, critic, author, professor, and historian, best known for his Pulitzer-winning book The Metaphysical Club, an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America.
"""A fascinating account of the great scandal.""-- ""Time"" ""When Theodore Tilton brought Henry Ward Beecher into court in 1875 on the charge of alienating his wife's affections, he raised the curtain on one of the most sensational trials in American history. The accused had been an intimate family friend of the Tiltons and was pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and a noted preacher and lecturer on public issues of the day. In Free Love and Heavenly Sinners, based on his articles in the New Yorker, Robert Shaplen tells the story with unvarnished realism against a background of circumstantial detail, much of it taken from the 3,000-page official record of the trial . . . In reviving what the author calls the 'passion drama' of the period he has brought a celebrated case into contemporary focus and has done it tellingly, assembling the record with stark precision and linking it closely to the moral and religious attitudes of the day."" --Ishbel ross ""New York Times"""
