Talk:Erskine Caldwell

Chronological Rearrangement Necessary

The article would be improved if the section on Works were rearranged according to the first year they were published. As it stands, God's Little Acre may have earned him the greatest fame or notoriety, but it was far from the first book of his that was published.

It appears that some of his publishers reassembled works from earlier years, and reprinted them as new works. For instance, the book When You Think of Me is a compendium of short stories and character sketches dating variously to 1936, 1941, 1944, and 1933 - one copyright for each section of the book. The first section, for instance, has the following short stories: The Light, A Visit to Mingus County, The Story of Mahlon, and a Message for Genevieve, all copyrighted in 1936. The second section of the book contains the following character sketches: The Barber of the Northwest, After Eighty Years, Grandpa in the Bathtub, The Man Under the Mountain, A Short Sleep in Louisiana, and A Country that Moves. All copyrighted in 1941. The third section of the book contains the following "Czechoslovakian" sketches: Bread in Uzok, Wine of Surany, and The Dogs of Ceske Budejovice. Those were copyrighted in 1933, 1935, and 1939 by Erskine Caldwell himself. The book, as a whole, takes its name after the fourth part, When You Think of Me. - copyrighted in 1959.

Since Erskine Caldwell had a lucrative time re-packaging and selling stories previously assigned to other publishers, it makes it difficult rearranging the list of works chronologically. It makes a lot of sense to arrange them according to their significance, or according to their impact on society. With that in mind, the two works that he is most famous for, are Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre.