Florence Deshon, 1893-1922, was an actress in silent films.

Max Eastman, 1883-1969, was an American author, editor, and prominent radical before and after World War I.

Deshon and Eastman met at The Masses Ball on December 15, 1916. Letters were exchanged while Miss Deshon was on tour with a road company in the East and Eastman was on a lecture tour of the West in 1917. Audience response to Eastman's speeches was sometimes vehement so that at Fargo, North Dakota, there was a secretive escape, which he described in a letter of August 29, 1917. The correspondence, much of it personal in nature, continued in the following years. In 1919 Miss Deshon was on tour with a road company of Among the Girls and in July went to Culver City, California, under contract to Goldwyn Studios. The next year the contract was broken, but in 1921 Miss Deshon was on the west coast again for more picture making and a return to the stage. In 1922, Miss Deshon was in New York, where she took her life on February 4.

Among the plays and movies in which Miss Deshon acted were: Among the Girls, The Beloved Vagabond, Cup of Fury, Dangerous Days, A Day's Pleasure, Jaffrey, Gentlemen of Leisure, Loves of Letty, The Sunshine Girl, The Roof Tree, Twins of Suffering Creek. Her letters reflect the experiences of an aspiring young actress in the days of the silent movies and provide frequent comments on the movie industry.

At this time, Max Eastman was editing The Liberator and made his home at Croton-on-the-Hudson, where the neighborhood included many of his associates and friends to whom he made reference in his letters.