Shirley Jackson was an influential American author whose work has garnered increasing attention from literary critics. Her short story "The Lottery" suggests a deeply unsettling underside to seemingly idyllic small-town America. Jackson herself avoided interviews and self-promotion, believing her books would speak for themselves. Her husband maintained that the darker elements of her work were not personal fantasies but intended to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears and totalitarian anxieties.
The latest collection features three captivating ghost stories by acclaimed cartoonist Seth, showcasing his unique storytelling style and artistic talent. Each narrative intertwines elements of the supernatural with rich character development and evocative illustrations, inviting readers into haunting yet poignant tales. This collection promises to blend humor and melancholy, reflecting on themes of memory, loss, and the spectral connections that linger in our lives.
"Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest writers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction, and also features family photographs and Shirley's own illustrations. Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to three months before her premature death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote, full of subversive wit, vivid imagination, and gorgeous prose. Jackson spent much of her adult life as a faculty wife and mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is the everyday: trips to the dentist and dream vacations, overdue taxes and broken Christmas tree bulbs, new dogs and new babies, fad diets and recipes for fudge. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. This intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson--writer and teacher, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife--up to the light"-- Provided by publisher
Franklin has gathered four of Jackson's novels, with which she began her irreplaceable, all too-brief career. Originally published between 1948 and 1958, they are published here without change except for the correction of typographical errors. Within these stories Jackson explores the recessed concealed within the prosperous world of the postwar 1940s and 50s-- and withing our own unacknowledged selves. -- adapted from front flap and Note on the Texts, pages 842-843
This deluxe collector's edition boxed set features the complete works of Shirley Jackson, showcasing all six of her novels alongside her renowned story collection, The Lottery, and an additional twenty-one stories. It offers a comprehensive look at Jackson's influential writing, making it a must-have for fans and collectors alike.
One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane. The Lottery and Other Stories, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range -- from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous -- and her power as a storyteller.
Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-
twentieth-century common. 'Just an Ordinary Day' is a gift to a new
generation. (San Francisco Chronicle) For Jackson devotees, as well as first-
time readers, this is a feast ... A virtuoso collection (Publishers Weekly)
The perfect read for Hallowe'en, this volume of Jackson's finest stories reveals the queen of American gothic at her unsettling, mesmerising bestThere's something nasty in suburbia. In these deliciously dark tales, the daily commute turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, the loving wife hides homicidal thoughts and the concerned citizen might just be an infamous serial killer. In the haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems and nowhere is safe, from the city streets to the country manor, and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods.
Let Me Tell You brings together the brilliantly eerie short stories Jackson is best known for with frank and inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays she wrote about her large, rowdy family; and revelatory personal letters and drawings. Jackson's landscape here is most frequently domestic dinner parties, children's games and neighbourly gossip but one that is continually threatened and subverted in her unsettling, inimitable prose. This collection is the first opportunity to see Shirley Jackson's radically different modes of writing side by side, revealing her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist and a powerful feminist
