Erskine Caldwell Biography and List of Works

American author, 'master of rural ribaldry,' whose unadorned novels and stories about the rural poor of the American South mix social realism with sex and violence. Caldwell struggled with censorship more than any other writer in his time. His fiction is characterised by unpredictable plots and characters. His writing is clear and powerful, and his attacks on poverty, racism, and the tenant farming system influenced public opinion deeply.

"The trouble with you, Pete," Oscar said to me, "is that you think you can run all of creation the exact way you want it run. It's time for you to find out that you're not the only human being in this world, and that millions of other people have rights, too. It's people like you who've got to wake up and realize that a man can't live a selfish life in this day and time."
(from Gulf Coast Stories, 1956)

Caldwell was born in White Oak, Georgia. His father was a missionary who moved from church to church. During these years Caldwell acquired a deep knowledgeof the lives of impoverished sharecroppers, which reflects in his best-known work, TOBACCO ROAD (1932).

As a young man, Caldwell took odd jobs and worked in the Southern states. He attended Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina, and the University of Virginia but did not graduate. In the 1920s Caldwell moved to Maine to devote himself to writing. After several Spartan years, he had three stories accepted for publication. In 1930 Caldwell destroyed all his unpublished work from previous years. 'Country Full of Swedes' was published at the Yale Review, and it received an award from the journal in 1933. AMERICAN EARTH, a collection of short stories about pithy passions and little lecheries, was published in 1931. Some of the stories first appeared in such magazines as The American Cravan, Blues, Frankfurter Zeitung, Front, The Hound and Horn, Nativity, Pagany, Scribner's Magazine, This Quarter, and Transition.

"Tom poked Lem with his thumb, nodding his head. Lem lifted her dress a little higher, looking for something pink. There was not anything yet, except more of her legs showing. Lem was determined to prove to Tom that Ozzie did not wear ten-cents-a-yard cotton mill-end underclothes. He lifted her dress a little higher and a little higher. Nothing appeared that would prove to Tom the things Lem said on the other end of the porch were true. The boys crowded closer and closer to Ozzie."
(from 'A Swell-Looking Girl' in American Earth)

During his five years in Maine Caldwell wrote two novels, The Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre - both were later made into films. The books shocked readers and were banned from many libraries. But critics also saw Caldwell as a literary realist and sociologist, whose works paint an accurate portrait of the rural poverty, where men and women have degenerated into an almost subhuman existence.

Tobacco Road is about a family of white sharecroppers driven to desperation by the oppression of a changing economic system. The book was adapted into screen and gained success as a play. A dramatization of the story by Jack Kirkland ran for seven and half years in the 1930s and early 1940s on the New York stage.

"As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan."

Caldwell's other works with Southern themes include JOURNEYMAN (1935), a chronicle of the activities of a self-proclaimed minister, TROUBLE IN JULY (1940), a story about lynching, A HOUSE IN THE UPLANDS (1946), THE SURE HAND OF GOD (1947) THIS VERY EARTH (1948), PLACE CALLED ESTHERVILLE (1949) and EPISODE IN PALMETTO (1950).

In 1936 Caldwell met the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, with whom he travelled for the next six years, married, divorced, and collaborated on four books. With Bourke-White Caldwell produced YOU HAVE SEEN THEIR FACES (1937), a documentary account of impoverished living conditions in the South. A similar book combining photographs and text appeared just before the outbreak of World War II, this time depicting Czechoslovakia.

During World War II Caldwell was for a time a newspaper correspondent in the Soviet Union. ALL-OUT ON THE ROAD TO SMOLENSK (1942) is Caldwell's personal account from this time. He also published travel books, essays, short stories and literary autobiographies, CALL IT EXPERIENCE (1951), Caldwell's informal review of his career as a writer, and IN SEARCH OF BISCO (1965).

Caldwell worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood for several years (1933-34, 1938, 1942-43). From 1942 to 1955 he was editor of American Folkways. In 1984 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Caldwell died in Paradise Valley, Arizona, on April 11, 1987.

For further reading: Erskine Caldwell by J. Korges (1969); Critical Essays on Erskine Caldwell, ed. by S. MacDonald (1981); by J. Devlin (1984); Conversations with Erskine Caldwell, ed. by E.T. Arnold (1988); Erskine Caldwell Reconsidered by E.T. Arnold (1990); Erskine Caldwell and the Fiction of Powerty by S.J. Cook (1991); Erskine Caldwell: A Biography by H.L. Klevar (1993); The Critical Response to Erskine Caldwell by R.L. McDonald (1997) - See also Depression America: John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), Hemingway's To Have and To Have Not (1937), John Don Passos USA (1930-36), James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932-35), Richard Wright's Native Son (1940).

THE BASTARD, (1929)
POOR FOOL, (1930)
AMERICAN EARTH / A SWELL-LOOKING GIRL, (1931)
TOBACCO ROAD, (1932)
GOD'S LITTLE ACRE, (1933)
WE ARE THE LIVING, (1933)
JOURNEYMAN, (1935)
KNEEL TO THE RISING SUN, (1935)
SOME AMERICAN PEOPLE, (1935)
TENANT FARMER, (1935)
THE SACRILICE OF ALAN KENT, (1936)
HAVE YOU SEEN THEIR FACES, (1937)
SOUTHWAYS, (1938)
NORTH OF THE DANUBE, (1939)
TROUBLE IN JULY, (1940)
JACKPOT, (1940)
SAY! IS THIS THE U.S.A.?, (1941)
ALL-AOUT ON THE ROAD TO SMOLENSK / MOSCOW UNDER FIRE, (1942)
GEORGIA BOY, (1943)
A DAY'S WOOING, (1944)
STORIES, (1945)
ON TRAGIC GROUND, (1944)
A HOUSE IN THE UPLANDS, (1946)
THE SURE HAND OF GOD, (1947)
THIS VERY EARTH, (1948)
MIDSUMMER PASSION, (1948)
WHERE THE GIRLS WERE DIFFERENT, (1945)
A PLACE CALLED ESTHERVILLE, (1949)
EPISODE IN PALMETTO, (1950)
CALL IT EXPERIENCE, (1951)
THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF ERSKINE CALDWELL, (1951)
A LAMP FOR NIGHTFALL, (1952)
THE COURTING OF SUZIE BROWN, (1952)
THE COMPLETE STORIES OF ERSKINE CALDWELL, (1953)
LOVE AND MONEY, (1954)
GRETTA, (1955)
GULF COAST STORIES, (1956)
CERTAIN WOMEN, (1958)
MOLLY COTTONTAIL, (1958)
CLAUDELLE INGLISH, (1959)
WHEN YOU THINK OF ME, (1959)
MEN AND WOMEN, (1961)
JENNY BY NATURE, (1961)
CLOSE TO HOME, (1962)
THE LAST NIGHT OF SUMMER, (1963)
AROUND ABOUT AMERICA, (1964)
A WOMAN IN THE HOUSE, (1964)
IN SEARCH OF BISCO, (1965)
THE DEER AT OUR HOUSE, (1966)
MISS MAMA AIMEE, (1967)
WRITING IN AMERICA, (1967)
DEEP SOUTH / IN THE SHADOWS OF THE STEEPLE, (1968)
SUMMERTIME ISLAND, (1968)
THE WEATHER SHELTER, (1969)
THE EARNSHAW NEIGHBORHOOD, (1971)
ANNETTE, (1973)
AFTERNOONS IN MID-AMERICA, (1976)
STORIES OF LIFE NORTH & SOUTH, (1983)
THE BLACK AND WHITE STORIES, (1984)
WITH ALL MY MIGHT, (1987)
CONVERSATIONS WITH ERSKINE CALDWELL, (1988)