[Tobacco Road was] a potent influence in the transition of popular fiction from the sentimental romance to the sexual shocker. Before Tobacco Road the sort of explicit erotic scenes that appeared in the novel were found in works of limited circulation, sanctioned by claims of artistic integrity; after attempts to suppress Tobacco Road were successfully resisted, such material became a staple product of commercial fiction designed for mass consumption.

As a social document, Tobacco Road was a highly effective instrument in the various projects of soil conservation and social welfare of the time. The intellectual climate was favorable to a view of the underprivileged South that Caldwell had dramatized so powerfully. His picture of Tobacco Road was one that inclined urban intellectual society to take a tolerant view of its own shortcomings. It was particularly congenial to a society that was undertaking, in the New Deal, large-scale ventures...