Biography

Shirley Jackson was a horror and mystery writer born in San Francisco, California in 1916. She is best remembered for her unsettling novel of paranoia and the supernatural, 'The Haunting of Hill House' (1959) and her terrifying short story 'The Lottery' (1948), a horror tale rife with symbolism that is still puzzled over by critics and academics to this day. 'The Lottery' is regarded as an American Classic and as one of the best pieces of short fiction in the history of American Literature.

Jackson was publishing around the same time as fellow genre writers Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, and Richard Matheson and is regarded by many - including Stephen King - as being one of the most influential writers of mystery, the occult, and Gothic horror.

Her books have been adapted to film and include The Haunting (1963), The Lottery (1996), and The Haunting (1999) by Jan de Bont.

Shirley Jackson sadly passed away in her sleep (1965) aged 48 following heart failure thought to be caused by neuroses and prescription drugs used to treat the condition.

She is fondly remembered by all in the fiction world.
- IMDb mini biography by: Matt Lee-Williams

Stephen King included her "The Haunting of Hill House"--the basis for the film The Haunting (1963)--in his top 100 favorite novels of all time. The list was published in his non-fiction book, "Danse Macabre", in which he also devotes a lengthy analysis of the opening paragraph of the novel. He has called the book one of the most important horror novels of the 20th century.

She is arguably most famous for her short story "The Lottery" (filmed as The Lottery (1996)), a dark and sinister tale about an annual game-ritual that takes place each year in a small village with a population circa 300. Whoever draws the final black spot is sacrificed in order to ensure a good harvest the following year. The story has been both lauded and condemned, but is nevertheless regarded as one of the best short stories in 20th-century American Literature.

In a 1960 lecture that was included in her collection "Come Along With Me", published in 1968, Jackson described the voluminous and vociferous reaction that the "New Yorker" magazine received after publishing her sinister short story "The Lottery" in 1948. She said that one of the most common questions she received from readers, especially early on (before the story had gotten its many dramatizations and re-publications) was, "Where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch".

Jack Ketchum narrated ten pages from Jackson's legendary horror novel "The Haunting of Hill House", which was made into The Haunting (1963). The reading took place in Burlington, Massachusetts, at the annual "Shirley Jackson Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Literature of Psychological Suspense, Horror, and the Dark Fantastic".

The publication of her short story "The Lottery" in "The New Yorker" magazine in 1944 (her debut in print) led to a record number of cancellations of subscriptions to the magazine, and to a great deal of angry mail from readers. However, "The New Yorker" stuck by her and published a great many of her subsequent stories over the remaining 21 years of her life.

[about the hate mail she received upon the 1948 publication of her story "The Lottery"] If I thought this was a valid cross-section of the reading public, I would give up writing.

At a thousand bucks a story, I can't afford to try to change the state of popular fiction today.