Shirley Jackson

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Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1919 - August 8, 1965) was an american author who wrote short stories and novels. Her most famous work is her short story "The Lottery", which combines a bucolic small-town-America setting with a horrific shock ending. The tone of most of her works is odd and macabre, with an impending sense of doom, often framed by very ordinary settings and characters.

Born in San Francisco, California, she graduated from Syracuse University in 1940. While a student there, she met future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, who was to become a noted literary critic.

In addition to her novels, Jackson also wrote a children's novel, Nine Magic Wishes, available in an edition illustrated by her grandson Miles Hyman. She also wrote two humorous memoirs, Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages, about her marriage and the experience of bringing up four children. After her death, her husband released her final unfinished novel, Come Along With Me, containing several chapters of her final work as well as several rare short stories and three speeches given by Jackson in her writing seminars.

In 1996, a crate of unpublished stories was found in the barn behind Jackson's house. These stories were published in a collection titled Just an Ordinary Day.

A large number of Miss Jackson's other papers are available in the Library of Congress.

Her novels include:

The Bird's Nest
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Haunting of Hill House
The Sundial
Hangsaman
The Road Through the Wall

Shirley Jackson has been a very prolific author. In all, Jackson has published, three articles, four works of non-fiction prose, two family books, seven novels, one play, one work of poetry, and more than fifty-five short stories. Jackson's primary works which are most notable is the short story "The Lottery"(1948), her two family books, "Life Among the Savages" (1953) and "Raising Demons"(1957), a non-fiction prose "Witchcraft in Salem Village"(1956), and her seven novels, "Road Through the Wall" (1948), "Hangsaman"(1951) "The Bird's Nest" (1954), "The Sundial" (1958),"The Haunting of Hill House"(1959), and "We Have Always Lived in a Castle" (1962). In Jackson's first novel, "The Road through the Wall"(1948), she wrote of a snobbish neighborhood in suburban San Francisco and sketched its moral collapse as a result of prejudice and murder. This work affirmed Jackson's loathing of intolerance and bigotry. Her short story, "The Lottery", also published in 1948 was about a town's tradition of sacrificing a human so there would be a good harvest. "The Hangsaman"(1951), her second novel, tells the story of a seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite mercifully escaping her father's oppression by leaving home to attend college. She does not have the social skills to adjust to the uninhibited environment, however, and so she invents Tony, an imaginary female friend. Tony soon becomes more frightening than friendly, and in a climactic scene, Natalie is forced to choose between reality and her imaginary friend. "Life Among the Savages"(1953) and "Raising Demons"(1957) are both about family life in a small New England town, which is where Shirley Jackson lived with her husband and children until her death last year. Jackson's next novel, "The Bird's Nest" (1954), is a psychological study based on a true case of multiple personality. Jackson's protagonist, Elizabeth Richmond, a somber, bland woman who is convinced she is responsible for her mother's death, invents alternate personas as a result of being unable to deal with guilt. With the help of a psychiatrist and an eccentric aunt, Elizabeth gradually regains control of her psyche. The novel is generally regarded as Jackson's wittiest novel since it was lauded for its comic yet compassionate treatment of mental disorder. In 1956, Jackson's non-fiction prose, "The Witchcraft of Salem Village", was published. It's a simple, chilling account of the witchcraft trials of 1692 and 93' when, because of testimony given by a group of little girls, twenty persons were executed as witches and others died in jail. "The Sundial", published in 1958, is an apocalyptic and satirical novel that centers upon eleven boorish people who believe that the end of the world is near. Seeking sanctuary in a sprawling gothic estate, they burn the books in the library, irrationally stock the shelves with canned olives and galoshes, play cards, and bicker endlessly. At the end of the novel, the group is still waiting for Armageddon. A gothic manor again plays a crucial role in "The Haunting of Hill House"(1959). This work concerns an experimental psychic study held at Hill House, an eerie edifice that is presumed to be haunted. Research participants include Eleanor Vance, a timid, repressed woman with astonishing psychic powers. The other people brought to Hill House are confident and self-centered and soon alienate Eleanor form the only environment in which she was ever comfortable. Jackson's last novel, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle"(1962) combines many of her most vital concerns-psychology, isolation, and evil-with a curiosity in black magic. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is the story of two sisters victimized by their small New England village because of the unsolved mass murder of their family. Although neighbors believe the murder was committed by Constance, the older sister, Constance knows that her psychopathic younger sister Merricat poisoned the family by putting arsenic in the sugar bowl. Throughout the story there is much struggle with the villagers and their cousin Charles, which results in Merricat burning down their mansion in order to kill Charles, but in the end the sisters stay together. Here Jackson questions the traditional definition of normality, suggesting that the villagers' violence is deviant behavior, while Merrricat's actions are prompted by a psychological disturbance that should evoke sympathy and understanding. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle remains Jackson's most critically acclaimed novel.