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Shirley Jackson

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Michael Stuhlbarg Reads a Selection from ‘The Haunting of Hill House’
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The Lottery
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Shirley Jackson


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

Died
August 08, 1965

Genre
Horror, Biographies & Memoirs, Short Stories


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

Combine Editions

Average rating: 3.88 · 989,034 ratings · 102,215 reviews · 340 distinct works • Similar authors
The Haunting of Hill House
by
3.81 avg rating — 390,532 ratings — published 1959 — 471 editions
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We Have Always Lived in the...
3.91 avg rating — 292,404 ratings — published 1962 — 219 editions
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The Lottery
4.04 avg rating — 108,832 ratings — published 1948 — 92 editions
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The Lottery and Other Stories
by
4.02 avg rating — 84,307 ratings — published 1949
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Hangsaman
3.76 avg rating — 11,929 ratings — published 1951 — 57 editions
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Dark Tales
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 9,776 ratings — published 2016 — 16 editions
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Life Among the Savages
3.97 avg rating — 9,309 ratings — published 1953 — 63 editions
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The Sundial
3.80 avg rating — 7,984 ratings — published 1958 — 41 editions
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The Bird's Nest
3.72 avg rating — 7,903 ratings — published 1954 — 4 editions
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The Witchcraft of Salem Vil...
3.80 avg rating — 4,819 ratings — published 1956 — 34 editions
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More books by Shirley Jackson…

Series by Shirley Jackson

Life Among the Savages Raising Demons
(2 books)
by
4.01 avg rating — 12,563 ratings

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Quotes by Shirley Jackson  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
tags: escape, escapism, first-sentence, opening-lines, reality, sanity
1306 likes
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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
tags: horror, house
1031 likes
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“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
794 likes
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