Caldwell, Erskine (redirected from Erskine Caldwell)

Caldwell, Erskine (kôld`wəl), 1903–87, American author, b. White Oak, Ga. His realistic and earthy novels of the rural South include Tobacco Road (1933), God's Little Acre (1933), This Very Earth (1948), and Summertime Island (1969). Among his volumes of short stories are Jackpot (1940) and Gulf Coast Stories (1956). With his second wife, Margaret Bourke-White, he published You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), about Southern sharecroppers.

Bibliography

See E. T. Arnold, ed., Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988); biography by D. B. Miller (1995); study by J. E. Devlin (1984).

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Caldwell, Erskine

(born Dec. 17, 1903, Coweta county, Ga., U.S.—died April 11, 1987, Paradise Valley, Ariz.) U.S. author. Caldwell became familiar with poor sharecroppers through his father's missionary work. Fame arrived with Tobacco Road (1932), a controversial novel whose title became a byword for rural squalor; adapted as a play, it ran more than seven years on Broadway. God's Little Acre (1933), also a best-seller, featured a cast of hopelessly poor degenerates. Like his other novels and stories about the rural Southern poor, they mix violence and sex in grotesque tragicomedy. He also wrote the text for documentary books with photographs by Margaret Bourke-White, whom he married.

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Caldwell, Erskine (Preston) (1903–87) writer; born in Moreland, Ga. In his early years he was a Hollywood screenwriter and foreign correspondent. His first novels, Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933), were widely banned for obscenity, but they created an enduring portrait of "white trash" and stimulated others to write frankly about the South they knew. He produced 50 volumes of fiction, travel writing, and memoirs, but his literary reputation declined with later works. He collaborated on several books with his wife, photographer Margaret Bourke-White.