Erskine Caldwell is the author of twenty-five novels, one-hundred and fifty short stories, and a dozen nonfiction books. And while the reading public loved him and couldn't get enough of him, critics have not been so adoring. Some famous writers (Faulkner was one) thought he was a great writer. Margaret Mitchell, who did not like him or Faulkner, said that they had betrayed the South for Yankee dollars. His books have been translated into forty-three languages. The stage adaptation of Tobacco Road ran for seven and a half years on Broadway. Caldwell's portrayal of rural poverty in the South was viewed by many Southerners as a betrayal. Margaret Mitchell, for one, criticized both Faulkner and Caldwell for betraying the South for Yankee dollars, and pointed out that Gone with the Wind contained "not a single sadist or degenerate." It may be difficult to believe, but as late as 1960 Erskine Caldwell was being considered as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. For a time he was ranked by some critics alongside Fitzgerald, Wolfe, and Steinbeck.The American Academy of Art and Letters gave him the chair of Lillian Hellman (There are only fifty-four chairs .) in 1984. Norman Mailer also received a chair at that time.
Caldwell died on April 11, 1987, in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

A listing of his novels:

The Bastard (1929)
Poor Fool (1930)
Tobacco Road (1932)
God's Little Acre (1933)
Journeyman (1935)
Trouble in July (1940)
All Night Long (1942)
Georgia Boy (1943)
Tragic Ground (1944)
A House in the Uplands (1946)
The Sure Hand of God (1947)
This Very Earth (1948)
A Place Called Estherville (1949)
Episode in Palmetto (1950)
A Lamp for Nightfall (1952)
Love and Money (1954)
Gretta (1955)
Claudelle Inglish (1958)
Jenny by Nature (1961)
Close to Home (1962)
The Last Night of Summer (1963)
Miss Mamma Aimee (1967)
Summertime Island (1968)
The Weather Shelter (1969)
The Earnshaw Neighborhood (1971)
Annette (1973)

Short Story Anthologies

American Earth (1931)
We Are the Living (1933)
Kneel to the Rising Sun and Other Stories (1935)
Southways (1938)
Jackpot: The Stories of Erskine Caldwell (1940)
Stories by Erskine Caldwell (1944)
The Caldwell Caravan: Novels and Stories (1946)
The Humorous Side of Erskine Caldwell (1951)
The Courting of Susie Brown (1952)
Complete Stories of Erskine Caldwell (1953) (Published in 1996 as The Stories of Erskine Caldwell)
Gulf Coast Stories (1956)
Certain Women (1957)
When You Think of Me (1959)
Men and Women (1961)
Stories of Life: North & South (1983)
he Black and White Stories of Erskine Caldwell (1984)
The Stories of Erskine Caldwell (1996)

His autobiographies:

Call It Experience: The Years of Learning How to Write (1951)
With All My Might: An Autobiography (1987)