(1919 - 1965)

Her Life:

Shirley Hardie Jackson was born in San Francisco, California on December 14th 1919. Her father, Leslie Jackson, was an executive at a lithograph factory, whilst her mother, Geraldine, was a housewife: though not rich, they were comfortably middle-class.

From early childhood, she openly rebelled against the restrictions placed on women of her social class. This was especially distressing to Jackson's mother Geraldine, who tried time and again to interest her daughter in clothes, parties, and other "ladylike" pursuits. She preferred to spend time with her brother or one of her few close friends; she also wrote poems, stories, and notes in a series of journals (whose eventual discovery by Geraldine was a particularly sore point with the young writer). Her inability and unwilligness to "fit in" reflected both her dislike for hypocrisy and her understanding that she could never duplicate her mother's innate sense of style or social purpose.

In 1923 the family moved to the prosperous San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, a setting which would provide her with the basis for her first novel, The Road Through the Wall.

While in high school, she began to write poetry and short fiction.

It was an urge that she would later claim had been sparked by “tremendous and frustrated irritation with whatever I was reading at the time – heaven knows, considering some of the things I put away at about this time …I decided that since there were no books in the world fit to read, I would write one”>

A major upheaval occurred in 1934, when Jackson’s family moved to Rochester, New York, where she would finish high school in the top quarter of her class. Following graduation, Jackson enrolled in the liberal arts program at the University of Rochester, but her time there was brief and unhappy: after a year she dropped out and spent 1936 back at home with her parents. This period provided the first hint of the mental fragility which would become a more serious problem in her later years and which would become such a prominent theme in her fiction.

She entered Syracuse University, where she met a number of people who influenced the course of both her literary and private life. Foremost among this group was Stanley Edgar Hyman, a left-wing Jewish scholar who encouraged the fledgling author to experiment with a variety of themes and styles.." In 1940, she further alienated her parents by marrying Hyman and moving to New York City.

In 1945, Hyman was offered a job teaching college English in North Bennington, Vermont. While life in the small village was radically different from life in New York City, the family soon began to settle in. Hyman became a popular lecturer while Jackson looked after the children and wrote short pieces for magazines. On June 28, 1948, the New Yorker published one of these short works, a story entitled "The Lottery."

In a 1960 lecture called "Shirley Jackson on the Morning of June 28, 1948, and 'The Lottery,'" she explained when she got the idia for the story: "The idea had come to me while I was pushing my daughter uphill in her stroller.... I had the idea fairly clearly in my mind when I put my daughter in her playpen and the frozen vegetables in the refrigerator, and writing the story, I found that it went quickly and easily, moving from beginning to end without pause. As a matter of fact, when I read it over later I decided that except for one or two minor corrections, it needed no changes and the story I finally typed up and sent to my agent the next day was almost word for word the original draft."

Read "The Lottery"

Almost immediately after it appeared in print, "The Lottery" caused a public reaction. The story's plot is a simple one: a group of townspeople gather in the local square on a lovely summer day. There is much good natured discussion as neighbors and friends catch up with one another. Soon, however, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary meeting. Under the direction of village elders, a lottery is held during which the head of each family draws a slip of paper out of an old black box. When all the slips have been collected, everyone anxiously awaits to see which family has drawn the slip with a black circle. The unfortunate "winners" are the Hutchinsons, who then must put their lots back in the box. Once again they draw out slips; this time, the mother, Tessie, draws the marked paper. With calm precision (and against Tessie's loud protestations), the villagers proceed to stone the unfortunate Mrs. Hutchinson to death.

Read "The Lottery"

Reader reaction to "The Lottery" was explosive and immediate. The New Yorker was flooded with letters from people who wanted to know what the story meant. Many writers were shocked and angered by the story's content; others wanted to know where these lotteries took place and whether spectators were allowed

By the middle of July, Jackson had begun getting so much mail that she had to get a bigger postal box. "Judging from these letters, people who read stories are gullible, rude, frequently illiterate, and horribly afraid of being laughed at," she noted in her lecture, adding that "there are three themes which dominate the letters of that first summer--three themes that might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse." Interestingly, the New Yorker never published any official comment on the story except to say that it had generated more mail than any work of fiction the magazine had ever published.

For the most part, Jackson also refused to comment on the story's content. In Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson, she stated: "I suppose I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal rite in the present, to shock the readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity of their own lives.... I gather that in some cases the mind just rebels. The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer at the end would amaze you." Over the years, Jackson continued to get mail about her story. Although these later letters were not as vehement as those written in 1948, they still prompted Jackson to once promise that she was "out of the lottery business for good."

The health problems that had plagued Jackson for many years came to a head after the publication of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. On the physical side, she had suffered most of her adult life from obesity, colitis, asthma, and heart problems; her mental health was aggravated for years by feelings of inadequacy and the stress of trying to be both a "perfect mother" and successful author (she also experienced severe bouts of agoraphobia that kept her housebound for weeks at a time). In spite of these discomforts, she continued to write and deliver lectures at colleges and conferences.

Shirley Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep at the age of 48. Shirley suffered throughout her life from various neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses. These ailments, along with the various prescription drugs used to treat them, may have contributed to her declining health and early death; however, it must also be noted that Jackson was a heavy smoker and was notably overweight at the time of her death.

After her death, her husband released a posthumous volume of her work, Come Along With Me, containing several chapters of her unfinished last novel as well as several rare short stories (among them "Louisa, Please Come Home") and three speeches given by Jackson in her writing seminars.

Her Books:

Shirley Jackson's first novel tells the tale of Pepper Street and its houses and families. It tells the story of a suburban California community on the verge of collapse. On the surface, everything is normal; the neighborhood children go to school and play together while the grown-ups tend to their private concerns. The peace of Cabrillo is shattered, however, by an increasingly disturbing series of events. A wall is torn down that connects one part of the suburb to the streets beyond, a three-year-old girl disappears (only to be found murdered), and a thirteen-year-old boy hangs himself (after being blamed for the child's death). An excellent beginning for one of the most important authors of the second half of the 20th century.

"The Lottery", one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

Hangsaman explores author's own adolescence, following a sensitive, brilliant girl from her parents' home off to college and through her descent into schizophrenia. The plot centers around seventeen year-old Natalie, a bright girl who makes up for her unpopularity and insecurity by creating a (perhaps) imaginary female friend named Tony. As Natalie enters college and suffers a number of emotional upheavals, her attachment to Tony becomes more intense and complex. In the novel's much-debated finale, Natalie finds herself stranded in a dark wood with Tony, who tries to embrace her. Natalie panics and runs away (only to suddenly realize that her need for Tony is over).

The author offers a humorous account of her experiences as she, her husband, and their four young children moved from an apartment in the city to a big house in rural Vermont. An ordinary housewife stuck in a big, shabby house with three marvelous, demanding children and a charming husband who takes detached interest in the chaos they generate? Yes, and her humor is something of a surprise. This is a hilarious chronicle of life in a small Vermont town, where getting the kids to school on time requires the combined gifts of a drill sergeant and a lady's maid. The saga of her son's bumpy adjustment to kindergarten, frequently anthologized as "Charles", is justly famous, but Jackson's account of the "Department Store Trip from Hell" (two kids, two toy guns, one doll carriage and doll, mayhem in revolving doors and escalators) is even funnier. Although her memoirs are as merciless as her ghost stories, you may not notice because you're laughing so hard.

This is the story of a woman who embodies in her intense life the mystery of the human personality. [The author] has used her sense of horror, her wit and her truly marvelous ability to characterize, to create Elizabeth. . . so that she becomes one of the unique figures of literature. . .

A relatively scarce novel about a young woman with multiple personalities, employing Jackson's gift for the type of horror that doesn't require goblins under the bed.

Raising Demons is the second and last of mystery writer Shirley Jackson's autobiographical accounts of her life as a small-town mommy in bucolic Bennington, Vermont in the Baby Boomer Fifties. Although many of the chapters in this book were originally published as short stories in various women's magazines and the NEW YORKER, in final form together the work functions as a good chronological novel set in the "Together-ness" mid-fifties.

An odd assortment of kin and hangers-on gather in a gothic mansion as, initially drawn by the lure of the family fortune, they get drawn into a sort of group apocalyptic psychosis. They end up burning an extensive library of books to make room for the food and supplies they are stocking up on and spend time their time planning out future mating arrangements, to guarantee the continuance of the race, and writing their own differing accounts of what is happening.

This may not be one of Jackson's greatest works, but as always, the story can be read either straight, for its entertainment value, or as a palimpsest, with hidden meanings lurking just below the surface. It could be a comment on religion or on 1950's nuclear hysteria or on any number of things; Jackson simply provides a creepy tale, delivered with wit and style, and it's up to readers to draw their own conclusions.

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is worthy of every ounce of notice it receives. Both critically and popularly acclaimed, it is, unquestionably, one of the finest horror novels ever written. You'll find it near the top of every "best of" genre list compiled by readers, academics, critics, and fans alike. Moreover, few horror writers of the last 40 years have not been influenced either directly or indirectly by Hill House and Jackson.

The story concerns several people brought together by a professor who wishes to investigate supposed paranormal phenomena in a country house. The dark energies of the house seem to somehow focus on Eleanor Vance -- an odd, lonely, somewhat mysterious 32-year-old woman. Despite the terrifying events that begin to occur, Eleanor feels -- for the first time in her life -- a sense of belonging and happiness in the house.

This novel is another story about the cruelty of humankind, the incessant social pressure of small towns to keep their members in line and the temptation it all produces to wall yourself off in a castle and never come out! The story is told by a mentally disturbed narrator which provides the reader with an uncomfortable though fascinating closeness to insanity and neurosis and not a small part of the creepiness of the novel is produced by this technique. Jackson is a genius of the most recessed and hidden parts of the human psyche and this novel is one of her best.

Mary Katherine Blackwood, known as Merricat, the main character, lives with her reclusive sister Constance and their Uncle Julian, the surviving members of a large family that came to a sad end by eating arsenic laced sugar. Then their isolation is threatened with the arrival of cousin Charles.

In addition to "The Lottery," it includes classics like "The Beautiful Stranger" (body snatcher theme with a twist), "The Summer People" (a tale of sinister villagers), "A Visit" (a lyrical ghost story), "The Rock" (where death is a short, shy gentleman), and "The Bus" (Jackson's most overtly ghoulish and frightening story of all). The unfinished novel Come Along with Me is mesmerizing, and Jackson's "Biography of a Story" is an utterly hilarious account of readers' reactions when "The Lottery" was first published in the New Yorker in 1948. As the New York Times said, "Everything this author ... has in it the dignity and plausibility of myth ... Shirley Jackson knew better than any writer since Hawthorne the value of haunted things."