A House in the Uplands was published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in 1946, and it represents Caldwell’s attempt to examine Southern poverty from the top rather than the bottom — to show that the plantation class was as much a victim of the Southern economic system as the sharecroppers who worked for them.
Grady Doolittle Dunbar is the last of his line, living in the decaying family house in the Georgia uplands with his wife Lucyanne. The Dunbar plantation, once prosperous, is now a ruin: the land is exhausted, the outbuildings are falling down, and the Black tenants who work the place are treated with a casual brutality that reflects Grady’s contempt for everyone, including himself. Grady drinks, gambles, and pursues the wives of his neighbors, while Lucyanne — proud, desperate, and far more capable than her husband — tries to maintain the appearance of gentility on nothing.
The novel argues that the planter class and the poor-white class are mirror images of the same failure: both are trapped in an economic system that has exhausted the land and left them with nothing except pride and resentment. The Dunbars are Lesters with better furniture.
Collecting A House in the Uplands
First edition (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1946): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Without jacket: $5–$15