1. Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American novelist and short story writer.
19 Facts About Erskine Caldwell
1. 2.
Erskine Caldwell was the only child of Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church minister Ira Sylvester Caldwell and his wife Caroline Preston Caldwell, a schoolteacher.
3.
Rev Erskine Caldwell's ministry required moving the family often, to places including Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina.
4.
Erskine Caldwell's ancestry included English nobility which held large land grants in eastern Virginia.
5.
Ira Erskine Caldwell's ancestors were Scots-Irish and had been in America since before the revolution and had fought in it.
6.
Erskine Caldwell dropped out of Erskine College to sign aboard a boat supplying guns to Central America.
7.
Erskine Caldwell entered the University of Virginia with a scholarship from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but was enrolled for only a year.
8.
Erskine Caldwell then became a football player, bodyguard, and salesman of "bad" real estate.
9.
Erskine Caldwell's first published works were The Bastard and Poor Fool, but the works for which he is most famous are his novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre.
10.
Erskine Caldwell was arrested at a book-signing there but was exonerated in court.
11.
In 1941, Erskine Caldwell reported from the USSR for Life magazine, CBS radio and the newspaper PM.
12.
Erskine Caldwell wrote articles from Mexico and Czechoslovakia for the North American Newspaper Alliance.
13.
In 1957, Erskine Caldwell married Virginia Moffett Fletcher Erskine Caldwell Hibbs, who had drawn illustrations for a recent book of his, moving to Twin Peaks in San Francisco, later moving to Paradise Valley, Arizona, in 1977.
14.
Erskine Caldwell is buried in Scenic Hills Memorial Park, Ashland, Oregon.
15.
Erskine Caldwell's grandson, Adam Hunter Erskine Caldwell, is a fine arts instructor at Academy of Art University.
16.
Disillusionment with the government led Erskine Caldwell to compose a short story published in 1933, "A Message for Genevieve".
17.
Erskine Caldwell wrote 25 novels, 150 short stories, twelve nonfiction collections, two autobiographies, and two books for young readers.
18.
Erskine Caldwell edited the influential American Folkways series, a 28-volume series of books about different regions of the United States.
19.
In December 1984, Erskine Caldwell was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.