Erskine Caldwell was a controversial figure who wrestled with some of the hardest issues of his time. He questioned race, class and gender, but dealt with them in a beguiling way, using the voices of comedy, tragedy, drama and adventure. He belonged to an age that produced some of the world's most acclaimed writers - including Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner - and justly earned his place among them.

Caldwell was born in Georgia in 1903. He travelled widely with his father, a missionary, and developed a concern for those living in poorer conditions. He attended the University of Virginia, but did not graduate. In 1926 he moved to Maine, where he started writing for journals and newspapers. He wrote several novels, but it was not until the publication of Tobacco Road (1933) that he started to get the recognition he deserved. In 1936 Caldwell married the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and with her wrote four books looking at the impoverished living conditions of the poor in the Deep South, including the influential and successful You Have Seen Their Faces (1937).

By the late 1940s Caldwell had sold more books than any author in America's history. God's Little Acre alone sold over 14 million copies. His attacks on poverty, racism and the tenant-farming system had a significant impact on public opinion. Of his writing career, Caldwell said: ‘All I wanted to do was tell a story, to tell it to the best of my ability.’