Jackson, Shirley

Entry updated 12 December 2022. Tagged: Author.

(1916-1965) US author of short stories and novels, married from 1940 until her death to the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman (1919-1970). None of her fiction is sf in any orthodox sense [see her entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Much of her work – although some untypical stories appeared before World War Two – comprises psychological studies of women at the end of their tether. She became famous for one tale, "The Lottery" (26 June 1948 The New Yorker), which established her reputation as an author of Gothic fiction; the ritual stoning which climaxes the story is perhaps readable as an example of Horror in SF, and the New England in which the event occurs betrays the profile of a land suffering the aftermath of the some vast Disaster. The Godgame implications of what may be her finest single tale, One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts (January 1955 F&SF; 1990 chap), are laid in with an Equipoisal certainty of touch – for the tale is simultaneously a mundane idyll and a savage demonstration of the fickle cruelty of the gods – that is deeply unsettling, but quite possibly invisible to the unwary. Most of the remaining stories assembled in The Lottery, or The Adventures of James Harris (coll 1949; vt The Lottery; Or, the Adventures of James Harris, Daemon Lover 1950) are fantasies of alienation.

The Haunting of Hill House (1959), filmed as The Haunting (1963) by Robert Wise, is a superb ghost story [for Bad Place see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], Equipoisally ambiguous about the balance or complicity between supernatural activity and a young woman's psychological disturbance. The closest to sf she came was probably The Sundial (1958), in which – following an ominous ghostly warning – a dozen of her typical New England characters await an unnamed but tangible catastrophe which will usher in the End of the World. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), with no overt supernatural content, is narrated by a disturbed teenager who may have slaughtered her entire family, and who has created a completely self-contained internal world; for her the outside is a barren landscape populated by ghosts and ghouls.

9 Magic Wishes (1964 chap) is a fantasy tale for children. Autobiographical work comprises Life Among the Savages (1953) and Raising Demons (1957), two edgily light-hearted memoirs of family life whose effect was radically dissimilar to that of Jackson's fiction.

The Shirley Jackson Awards, named for her and honouring "psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic", were first presented in 2008; many award winners are represented in When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson (anth 2021) edited by Ellen Datlow, an Original Anthology that also contains work from other authors. [JC]

Shirley Hardie Jackson

born San Francisco, California: 14 December 1916 [Jackson herself claimed 1919]

died North Bennington, Vermont: 8 August 1965

works (selected)

• The Road Through the Wall (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1948) [hb/Paul Galdone]
  • The Other Side of the Street (New York: Pyramid Books, 1957) [vt of the above: pb/Larry Newquist]
• Hangsaman (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951) [hb/]
• The Bird's Nest (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954) [hb/Philip Grushkin]
  • Lizzie (New York: New American Library/Signet, 1957) [vt of the above: reissued to accompany the film Lizzie (1957): pb/Hulings]
• The Sundial (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958) [hb/Ronald Clyne]
• The Haunting of Hill House (New York: The Viking Press, 1959) [hb/Paul Bacon]
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle (New York: The Viking Press, 1962) [hb/Paul Bacon]
  • The Lottery and Other Stories / The Haunting of Hill House / We Have Always Lived in the Castle (New York: Book of the Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club, 1991) [omni of the above two plus The Lottery below: pb/]
    • The Masterpieces of Shirley Jackson (London: Robinson Publishing/Raven Books, 1991) [omni: vt of the above: pb/]
• Novels and Stories (New York: The Library of America, 2010) [omni comprising The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and stories from all collections below: edited by Joyce Carol Oates: hb/]
• Four Novels of the 1940s & 50s (New York: The Library of America, 2020) [omni comprising The Sundial, The Bird's Nest, Hangsaman and The Road Through the Wall: edited by Joyce Carol Oates: hb/]
  • The Shirley Jackson Collection (New York: The Library of America, 2020) [boxed set of the above two volumes in slipcase: hb/]

collections and stories

• The Lottery; Or, the Adventures of James Harris (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1949) [coll: hb/Bill English]
  • The Lottery; Or, the Adventures of James Harris, Daemon Lover (New York: Lion Books, 1950) [coll: vt of the above: pb/Herman E Bischoff]
  • The Lottery: Adventures of the Demon Lover (New York: Avon Books, 1960) [coll: vt of the above: pb/Walter Brooks]
  • The Lottery and Other Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1962) [coll: vt of the above: hb/]
  • The Lottery: Adventures of the Daemon Lover (London: Robinson, 1988) [coll: vt of the above: spelling change back from "demon" may have been intended: pb/]
  • Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": The Authorised Graphic Adaptation (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1962) with Miles Hyman [graph: adaptation of the above: illus/hb/Miles Hyman]
• 9 Magic Wishes (New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1964) [story for children: chap: hb/]
• Come Along with Me: Part of a Novel, Sixteen Stories, and Three Lectures (New York: The Viking Press, 1968) [coll: includes unfinished novel Come Along with Me: edited by Stanley Edgar Hyman: hb/]
• One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts (Mankato, Minnesota: Creative Education, 1990) [story: chap: hb/Etienne Delessert]
• Just an Ordinary Day (New York: Bantam Books, 1997) [coll: hb/Tom Hallman]
• The Tooth (London: Penguin Mini Modern Classic, 2011) [coll: chap: pb/]
• Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays and Other Writings (New York: Random House, 2015) [coll: hb/Edel Rodriguez]
• Dark Tales (London: Penguin, 2016) [coll: hb/]
• The Missing Girl (London: Penguin, 2018) [coll: chap: pb/]
• A Visit: A Ghost Story for Christmas (New York: Biblioasis, 2022) [story: chap: illus/pb/Seth]

nonfiction

• Life Among the Savages (New York: Farrar Straus and Young, 1953) [nonfiction: hb/]
• Raising Demons (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957) [nonfiction: hb/]

about the author

• Judy Oppenheimer. Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1988) [nonfiction: hb/]

links

• Shirley Jackson
• The Shirley Jackson Awards
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Bad Place; Shirley Jackson
• Picture Gallery

previous versions of this entry

• Internet Archive