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Erskine Caldwell, 1903-1987
Erskine Caldwell produced more than fifty books in the course of his long writing career, but he is best remembered for only two, "Tobacco Road" and "God's Little Acre." Both published in the early 1930s, these two novels focused on the most impoverished segment of rural life in Caldwell's native Georgia and in them, he depicted that world with a raw and earthy frankness that many found offensive. Others, however, applauded his candor and embraced him as a spokesman for the downtrodden. Caldwell's portrayal of southern rural poverty doubtless fed the Depression era's impulse to try to address the problem. But Caldwell always claimed that when he sat down to write, social change was not his goal. "I was never trying to prove anything," he said in 1982. "I was only trying to tell a story."
Frederick S. Wight, 1934 |