Erskine caldwell bio

Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903–April 11, 1987) was a prolific writer whose novels, stories, and nonfiction about the American South combined burlesque humor, social criticism, brutal violence, and graphic sexuality.

He was one of the Depression-era's most prominent and controversial literary figures.

The son of a reform-minded itinerant minister, Caldwell lived in seven southern states by the time he was twelve. Although he never received a high school diploma, he attended the University of Virginia, which he left without a degree in 1925 to work as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. Dedicated to becoming a professional fiction writer, Caldwell quit the paper in 1926 and moved to Maine, where he lived in dire poverty and obscurity, gradually gaining notice for stories published in several of the era's little magazines.

The central theme of Caldwell's Depressionera writing is the agony of rural impoverishment.

His first two novels, Poor Fool (19