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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 · 1,002,770 ratings · 103,813 reviews · 341 distinct works • Similar authors
The Haunting of Hill House
by
3.81 avg rating — 396,293 ratings — published 1959 — 243 editions
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We Have Always Lived in the...
3.91 avg rating — 296,947 ratings — published 1962 — 222 editions
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The Lottery
4.04 avg rating — 110,233 ratings — published 1948 — 67 editions
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The Lottery and Other Stories
by
4.01 avg rating — 84,654 ratings — published 1949 — 54 editions
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Hangsaman
3.76 avg rating — 12,171 ratings — published 1951 — 58 editions
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Dark Tales
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 9,963 ratings — 17 editions
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Life Among the Savages
3.96 avg rating — 9,513 ratings — published 1953 — 14 editions
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The Sundial
3.79 avg rating — 8,180 ratings — published 1958 — 41 editions
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The Bird's Nest
3.73 avg rating — 8,033 ratings — published 1954
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The Missing Girl
3.53 avg rating — 5,214 ratings — published 2018 — 6 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 — 12,788 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
1307 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
1035 likes
Like

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

March 2018 Revisit the Shelf Reread

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, 489 pages, 1859, Last Read November 2014
 
  45 votes, 12.2%

1984 by George Orwell, 328 pages, 1949, Last Read November 2015
 
  32 votes, 8.7%

Persuasion by Jane Austen, 256 pages, 1817, Last Read August 2015
 
  29 votes, 7.9%

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, 449 pages, 1938, Last Read May 2015
 
  28 votes, 7.6%

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, 258 pages, 1989, Last Read January 2017
 
  27 votes, 7.3%

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 671 pages, 1866, Last Read June 2014
 
  25 votes, 6.8%

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, 542 pages, 1848, Last Read April 2015
 
  24 votes, 6.5%

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 867 pages, 1847, Last Read October 2011
 
  24 votes, 6.5%

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 254 pages, 1890, Last Read November 2016
 
  23 votes, 6.2%

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 505 pages, 1853, Last Read August 2014
 
  20 votes, 5.4%

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 343 pages, 1966, Last Read November 2016
 
  18 votes, 4.9%

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, 296 pages, 1929, Last Read September 2015
 
  17 votes, 4.6%

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, 154 pages, 1900, Last Read February 2012
 
  14 votes, 3.8%

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, 146 pages, 1962, Last Read September 2016
 
  12 votes, 3.3%

The Iliad by Homer, 683 pages, -750, Last Read July 2012
 
  11 votes, 3.0%

King Lear by William Shakespeare, 316 pages, 1603, Last Read October 2012
 
  11 votes, 3.0%

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, 251 pages, 1853, Lasr Read January 2015
 
  9 votes, 2.4%

369 total votes
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Topics Mentioning This Author

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