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Published Jul 2021
656 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House.
i must stop writing letters and get to writing a novel.
Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad.
i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as grand central station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet.
Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson's writing over nearly three decades.
The novel is getting sadder. It's always such a strange feeling—I know something's going to happen, and those poor people in the book don't; they just go blithely on their ways.
Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson's own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson—writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife—up to the light.
"The life of Shirley Jackson (1916–1965)—as a mother and a writer—emerges in vivid detail in this collection of correspondence, edited by her son Hyman...Full of wit and heartbreak, this volume shines, and Jackson's singular prose never fails to entertain." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Famed for such chillers as "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson reveals a warm, witty side in her voluminous correspondence...A vivid, engaging, and engrossing collection from one of American literature's great letter writers." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"At turns hysterical and heartbreaking, this collection is an entertaining and intriguing read even for those who are just discovering Jackson's many literary gifts. Recommended." - Library Journal
"The breadth of Shirley Jackson's artistry is still being recognized. This intimate collection of her correspondence makes us feel the odds against which this working mother, daughter, and wife accomplished what she did, and at what costs. This book is surely as much a feminist document as a literary one." - Jonathan Lethem
"The Letters of Shirley Jackson offers so much more than a simple peek behind the curtain of one of the most important literary lives of the twentieth century. Her letters are full of warmth and insight while displaying her uncompromising wit and talent, as well as a melancholic, haunted vulnerability...A book to be cherished and reread." - Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Survivor Song
This information about The Letters of Shirley Jackson was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Sundial; two bestselling family chronicles, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons; and hundreds of short stories, many published in five separate posthumous collections. She died in 1965 at the age of forty-eight.
Laurence Jackson Hyman (editor), the eldest child of Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman, has spent most of his professional life in publishing—as a writer, photographer, editor, art director, and publisher. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of dozens of books and monographs, including two posthumous collections of his mother's stories: Just an Ordinary Day and Let Me Tell You. He was the executive producer for the 2018 film adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
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.
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