Shirley Jackson  

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Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer, known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories.

Born in San Francisco, California, Jackson attended Syracuse University in New York, where she became involved with the university's literary magazine and met her future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman. After they graduated, the couple moved to New York and began contributing to The New Yorker, Jackson as a fiction writer and Hyman as a contributor to "Talk of the Town".

The couple settled in North Bennington, Vermont, in 1945, after the birth of their first child, when Hyman joined the faculty of Bennington College.

After publishing her debut novel The Road Through the Wall (1948), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood in California, Jackson gained significant public attention for her short story "The Lottery", which presents the sinister underside of a bucolic American village. She continued to publish numerous short stories in literary journals and magazines throughout the 1950s, some of which were assembled and reissued in her 1953 memoir Life Among the Savages. In 1959, she published The Haunting of Hill House, a supernatural horror novel widely considered to be one of the best ghost stories ever written.

"The persona that Jackson presented to the world was powerful, witty, even imposing," wrote Zoë Heller in the New Yorker. "She could be sharp and aggressive with fey Bennington girls and salesclerks and people who interrupted her writing. Her letters are filled with tartly funny observations. Describing the bewildered response of New Yorker readers to 'The Lottery,' she notes, 'The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washing machine at the end would amaze you.

In an era when women were not encouraged to work outside the home, Jackson became the chief breadwinner, while also raising the couple's four children.

"She did work hard," her son Laurence said. "She was always writing, or thinking about writing, and she did all the shopping and cooking, too. The meals were always on time. But she also loved to laugh and tell jokes. She was very buoyant that way." For examples of her wit, he refers readers to her many humorous cartoons, one of which depicts a husband cautioning a wife not to carry heavy things during pregnancy, but not offering to help.

By the 1960s, Jackson's health began to deteriorate significantly, ultimately leading to her death due to a heart condition in 1965 at the age of 48. Jackson has been cited as an influence on a diverse set of authors, including Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Sarah Waters, Nigel Kneale, Claire Fuller, Joanne Harris, and Richard Matheson.

Contents

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Collections

  • The Lottery and Other Stories (Farrar, Straus, 1949)
  • The Magic of Shirley Jackson (ed. Stanley Edgar Hyman; Farrar, Straus, 1966)
  • Come Along with Me: Part of a Novel, Sixteen Stories, and Three Lectures (ed. Stanley Edgar Hyman; Viking, 1968)
  • Just an Ordinary Day (ed. Laurence & Sarah Hyman; Bantam, 1995)
  • Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories (ed. Joyce Carol Oates; Library of America, 2010)
  • Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (ed. Laurence & Sarah Hyman; Random House, 2015)
  • Dark Tales (Penguin, 2016)

Short stories

  • "About Two Nice People", Ladies' Home Journal, July 1951
  • "Account Closed", Good Housekeeping, April 1950
  • "After You, My Dear Alphonse", The New Yorker, January 1943
  • "Afternoon in Linen", The New Yorker, September 4, 1943
  • "All the Girls Were Dancing", Collier's, November 11, 1950
  • "All She Said Was Yes", Vogue, November 1, 1962
  • "Alone in a Den of Cubs", Woman's Day, December 1953
  • "Aunt Gertrude", Harper's, April 1954
  • "The Bakery", Peacock Alley, November 1944
  • "Birthday Party", Vogue, January 1, 1963
  • "The Box", Woman's Home Companion, November 1952
  • "Bulletin", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1954
  • "The Bus", The Saturday Evening Post, March 27, 1965
  • "Call Me Ishmael", Spectre, Fall 1939
  • "A Cauliflower in Her Hair", Mademoiselle, December 1944
  • "Charles", Mademoiselle, July 1948
  • "The Clothespin Dolls", Woman's Day, March 1953
  • "Colloquy", The New Yorker, August 5, 1944
  • "Come Dance with Me in Ireland", The New Yorker, May 15, 1943
  • "Concerning … Tomorrow", Syracusan, March 1939
  • "The Daemon Lover ['The Phantom Lover']", Woman's Home Companion, February 1949
  • "Daughter, Come Home", Charm, May 1944
  • "Day of Glory", Woman's Day, February 1953
  • "Dinner for a Gentleman", Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, September 2016
  • "Don’t Tell Daddy", Woman's Home Companion, February 1954
  • "The Dummy", April 1949
  • "Every Boy Should Learn to Play the Trumpet", Woman's Home Companion, October 1956
  • "Family Magician", Woman's Home Companion, September 1949
  • "A Fine Old Firm", The New Yorker, March 4, 1944
  • "The First Car Is the Hardest", Harper's, February 1952
  • "The Friends", Charm, November 1953
  • "The Gift", Charm, December 1944
  • "A Great Voice Stilled", Playboy, March 1960
  • "Had We But World Enough", Spectre, Spring 1940
  • "Happy Birthday to Baby", Charm, November 1952
  • "Home", Ladies' Home Journal, August 1965
  • "The Homecoming", Charm, April 1945
  • "The House", Woman's Day, May 1952
  • "I Don't Kiss Strangers", Just an Ordinary Day (Bantam, 1995)
  • "Indians Live In Tents", Just An Ordinary Day (Bantam, 1995)
  • "An International Incident", The New Yorker, September 12, 1943
  • "I.O.U"., Just an Ordinary Day (Bantam, 1995)
  • "The Island", New Mexico Quarterly Review, 1950, vol. 3
  • "It Isn’t the Money", The New Yorker, August 25, 1945
  • "It's Only a Game", Harper's, May 1956
  • "Journey with a Lady", Harper's, July 1952
  • "Liaison a la Cockroach", Syracusan, April 1939
  • "Little Dog Lost", Charm, October 1943
  • "A Little Magic", Woman's Home Companion, January 1956
  • "Little Old Lady", Mademoiselle, September 1944
  • "The Lottery", The New Yorker, June 26, 1948
  • "Louisa, Please Come Home", Ladies' Home Journal, May 1960
  • "The Lovely House", New World Writing, n.2, 1952
  • "The Lovely Night", Collier's, April 8, 1950
  • "Lucky to Get Away", Woman's Day, August 1953
  • "The Man in the Woods", The New Yorker, April 28, 2014
  • "Men with Their Big Shoes", Yale Review, March 1947
  • "The Missing Girl", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1957
  • "Monday Morning", Woman's Home Companion, November 1951
  • "The Most Wonderful Thing", Good Housekeeping, June 1952
  • "Mother Is a Fortune Hunter", Woman's Home Companion, May 1954
  • "Mrs. Melville Makes a Purchase", Charm, October 1951
  • "My Friend", Syracusan, December 1938
  • "My Life in Cats", Spectre, Summer 1940
  • "My Life with R.H. Macy", The New Republic, December 22, 1941
  • "My Son and the Bully", Good Housekeeping, October 1949
  • "Nice Day for a Baby", Woman's Home Companion, July 1952
  • "Night We All Had Grippe", Harper's, January 1952
  • "Nothing to Worry About", Charm, July 1953
  • "The Omen", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1958
  • "On the House", The New Yorker, October 30, 1943
  • "One Last Chance to Call", McCall's, April 1956
  • "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1955
  • "The Order of Charlotte's Going", Charm, July 1954
  • "Paranoia", The New Yorker, August 5, 2013
  • "Pillar of Salt", Mademoiselle, October 1948
  • "The Possibility of Evil", The Saturday Evening Post, December 18, 1965
  • "Queen of the May", McCall's, April 1955
  • "The Renegade", Harper's, November 1949
  • "Root of Evil", Fantastic, March–April 1953
  • "The Second Mrs. Ellenoy", Reader's Digest, July 1953
  • "Seven Types of Ambiguity", Story, 1943
  • "Shopping Trip", Woman's Home Companion, June 1953
  • "The Smoking Room", Just an Ordinary Day (Bantam, 1995)
  • "The Sneaker Crisis", Woman's Day, October 1956
  • "So Late on Sunday Morning", Woman's Home Companion, September 1953
  • "The Strangers", Collier's, May 10, 1952
  • "Strangers in Town", The Saturday Evening Post, May 30, 1959
  • "Summer Afternoon", Just an Ordinary Day (Bantam, 1995)
  • "The Summer People", Charm, 1950
  • "The Third Baby's the Easiest", Harper's, May 1949
  • "The Tooth", The Hudson Review, 1949, vol. 1, no. 4
  • "Trial by Combat", The New Yorker, December 16, 1944
  • "The Very Strange House Next Door", Just an Ordinary Day (Bantam, 1995)
  • "The Villager", The American Mercury, August 1944
  • "Visions of Sugarplums", Woman's Home Companion, December 1952
  • "When Things Get Dark", The New Yorker, December 30, 1944
  • "Whistler's Grandmother", The New Yorker, May 5, 1945
  • "The Wishing Dime", Good Housekeeping, September 1949
  • "Worldly Goods", Woman's Day, May 1953
  • "Y and I", Syracusan, October 1938
  • "Y and I and the Ouija Board", Syracusan, November 1938
  • "The Witch", 1949

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Children's works

  • The Witchcraft of Salem Village (Random House, 1956)
  • The Bad Children: A Play in One Act for Bad Children (Dramatic Publishing Company, 1958)
  • Nine Magic Wishes (Crowell-Collier, 1963)
  • Famous Sally (Harlin Quist, 1966)

Memoirs




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Shirley Jackson" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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