Erskine Caldwell
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road
Tobacco Road (novel)
Tobacco Road is a 1932 novel by Erskine Caldwell about Georgia sharecroppers. It was dramatized for Broadway by Jack Kirkland in 1933, and ran for a then-astounding eight years . A 1941 film version, deliberately played mainly for laughs, was directed by John Ford, and the storyline was...
and God's Little Acre
God's Little Acre
God's Little Acre is a 1933 novel by Erskine Caldwell, which was made into a film of the same name in 1958.The novel was so controversial that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice attempted to censor it, leading to the author's arrest and trial for obscenity...
won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was deprecating the people of the region.
Biography
Caldwell was born in a house in a wooded area outside Moreland, GeorgiaMoreland, Georgia
Moreland is a town in Coweta County, Georgia, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 393. Josh Evans is the Mayor.The author Erskine Caldwell was born in Moreland in 1903...
, the son of a minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church
The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as it exists today is the remnant of a small denomination, which was formed from the Synod of the South, a division of the Associate Reformed Church...
. During his early childhood he was relocated from state to state across the American South, as his father found jobs in various churches.
Later, he attended, but did not graduate from Erskine College
Erskine College
Erskine College is a four year, Christian liberal arts college located in Due West, South Carolina.-Early history:Established in 1839 by the Associate Reformed Synod of the South as an academy for men, Erskine College became the first four year, church-related college in South Carolina...
. He was six feet tall, athletic, and played football. His political sympathies were with the working class, and he used his experiences with common workers to write books that extolled the simple life of those less fortunate than he was. Later in life, he gave seminars on low-income tenant-sharecroppers in the American South.
His first and second published works were Bastard (1929) and Poor Fool (1930) but the works for which he is most famous are his novels Tobacco Road
Tobacco Road (novel)
Tobacco Road is a 1932 novel by Erskine Caldwell about Georgia sharecroppers. It was dramatized for Broadway by Jack Kirkland in 1933, and ran for a then-astounding eight years . A 1941 film version, deliberately played mainly for laughs, was directed by John Ford, and the storyline was...
(1932) and God's Little Acre
God's Little Acre
God's Little Acre is a 1933 novel by Erskine Caldwell, which was made into a film of the same name in 1958.The novel was so controversial that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice attempted to censor it, leading to the author's arrest and trial for obscenity...
(1933). Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.- Early years :Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland,...
was his literary agent, 1932–1943 and 1947–1948.
When his first book was published, it was banned and copies were seized by authorities. Later, with the publication of God's Little Acre, authorities, at the instigation of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice was an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public, founded in 1873. Its specific mission was to monitor compliance with state laws and work with the courts and district attorneys in bringing offenders to justice. It and its...
(apparently incensed at Caldwell's choice of title), arrested Caldwell and seized his copies when he went to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
for a book-signing event. A trial exonerated Caldwell, and he counter-sued for false arrest and malicious prosecution.
Through the 1930s, Caldwell and his wife Helen managed a bookstore in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. Caldwell was married to photographer Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her...
from 1939 to 1942, and they collaborated on three photo-documentaries: You Have Seen Their Faces
You Have Seen Their Faces
Viking Press published the book You Have Seen Their Faces in 1937, by noted photographer Margaret Bourke White and novelist Erskine Caldwell, then husband and wife...
(1937), North of the Danube (1939), and Say, Is This The USA (1941).
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Caldwell obtained papers from the USSR that allowed him to travel to Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and work as a foreign correspondent documenting the war effort there. Disillusionment with the intrigues of the Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
ist regime led him to compose a four-page short story, "Message for Genevieve," published on returning to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1944. In this story, a woman journalist is executed by a firing squad after being tried in a secret court on charges of espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
.
After he returned from World War II, Caldwell took up residence in San Francisco. His ex-wife kept the bookstore in Maine as a property settlement.
During the last twenty years of his life, his routine was to travel the world for six months of each year, taking with him notebooks in which to jot down his ideas. Many of these notebooks were not published, but can be examined in a museum dedicated to him: The house in which he was born was moved from its original site and preserved, and was made into a museum in the town square of Moreland, Ga.
Caldwell died from complications of emphysema
Emphysema
Emphysema is a long-term, progressive disease of the lungs that primarily causes shortness of breath. In people with emphysema, the tissues necessary to support the physical shape and function of the lungs are destroyed. It is included in a group of diseases called chronic obstructive pulmonary...
and lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
on April 11, 1987, in Paradise Valley, Arizona
Paradise Valley, Arizona
Paradise Valley is a small, affluent town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2005 Census Bureau, the population of the town was 14,558. Despite the town's relatively small area and population compared to other municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Paradise...
. He is interred in Scenic Hills Memorial Park, Ashland
Ashland, Oregon
Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States, near Interstate 5 and the California border, and located in the south end of the Rogue Valley. It was named after Ashland County, Ohio, point of origin of Abel Helman and other founders, and secondarily for Ashland, Kentucky, where other...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
.
External links
- The Papers of Erskine P. Caldwell in the Dartmouth College Library
- New Georgia Encyclopedia: Erskine Caldwell
- Erskine Caldwell Birthplace and Museum
- Wade Publishing, Publisher of Storyteller: A Life of Erskine Caldwell
- Article by Sylvia J. Cook
- http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1347&dat=19830710&id=9egSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wPsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1590,3463452Phil Thomas' review of the 1983 Caldwell stort story collection "Stories of Life North & South", in the July 10, 1983 issue of The LedgerThe LedgerThe Ledger is a daily newspaper serving Lakeland, Florida and the Polk County area. It is owned by The New York Times Company. Jerome Ferson became publisher of the newspaper on July 30, 2007....
] - "Erskine Caldwell: A Note for the Negative" by Carl Bode
- "Erskine Caldwell: A Note for the Negative" by Carl Bode (2)
- Georgia Writers Hall of Fame: Erskine Caldwell