THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON

Shirley Jackson, author of THE LOTTERY and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, is one of the most important American writers in the last century, and one of the greatest writers of the female experience. Many contemporary writers have been vocal about their debt to and love of Shirley Jackson, including Donna Tartt, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, among others. Now, in this extraordinary compilation of never-before-published letters, Jackson lays bare her life with all of the trademarks that make her fiction so beloved.

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, selected from various collections public and private, have become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote.

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, recipes for fudge - but then, there's the occasional hobnobbing with New York's publishing literati, John Farrar, Bennett Cerf, and Alfred Knopf, and about writing, deadlines, and advances. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise.

Co-edited by Jackson's eldest son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, who contributes invaluable context throughout, this intimate collection, full of subversive wit, vivid imagination, and gorgeous prose, holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson--writer and teacher, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife--up to the light.

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story "The Lottery," which was published in The New Yorker in 1948. She is the author of six novels, including THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, which is a high-profile Netflix TV series with a second season out now, and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN A CASTLE, which became a 2018 film adaptation now available on Netflix. In addition, two works of nonfiction, LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS, and hundreds of short stories. She died in 1965.

Laurence Jackson Hyman, the eldest child of Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman, has spent most of his professional life in publishing as writer, photographer, editor, art director, and publisher. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of dozens of books and monographs.
Bernice M. Murphy (academic consultant) is an associate professor/lecturer in popular literature at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She edited the collection Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy and has written several articles and book chapters on Jackson's writing. She is also an expert on American horror and Gothic narratives. Her current work in progress is a monograph entitled California Gothic.