Shirley Jackson





Shirley Jackson

Author profile


born
in San Francisco, California, The United States
December 14, 1916

died
August 08, 1965

gender
female

genre


About this author

Shirley Jackson was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.

She is best known for her dystopian short story, "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown America. In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" was published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, specul...more


Average rating: 4.02 · 79,122 ratings · 5,441 reviews · 106 distinct works · Similar authors
The Lottery and Other Stories
4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 avg rating — 26,396 ratings — published 1949 — 29 editions
The Haunting of Hill House
by
3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 avg rating — 22,364 ratings — published 1959 — 50 editions
We Have Always Lived in the...
by
4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 12,430 ratings — published 1962 — 46 editions
The Lottery
4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 avg rating — 9,678 ratings — published 1948 — 8 editions
Life Among the Savages
4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 avg rating — 1,323 ratings — published 1953 — 9 editions
Just an Ordinary Day: The U...
by
4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 avg rating — 628 ratings — published 1996 — 4 editions
Raising Demons
4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 avg rating — 538 ratings — published 1957 — 3 editions
The Lottery and Other Stori...
4.32 of 5 stars 4.32 avg rating — 549 ratings — published 1991 — 2 editions
Come Along With Me
by
4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 avg rating — 400 ratings — published 1968 — 8 editions
The Sundial
3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 avg rating — 380 ratings — published 1958 — 6 editions
More books by Shirley Jackson…
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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