Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories [Hardcover]

In one volume:The Haunting of Hill House,The Lottery, and much more, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle,now a major motion picture starring Taissa Farmiga and Sebastian Stan

The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable, writes A. M. Homes. It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse. In this Library of America volume Joyce Carol Oates, our leading practitioner of the contemporary Gothic, presents the essential works of Shirley Jackson, the novels and stories that, from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, wittily remade the genre of psychological horror for an alienated, postwar America. She opens withThe Lottery(1949), Jackson's only collection of short fiction, whose disquieting title story-one of the most widely anthologized tales of the 20th century-has entered American folklore. Also among these early works are The Daemon Lover, a story Oates praises as deeper, more mysterious, and more disturbing than 'The Lottery,' and Charles, the hilarious sketch that launched Jackson's secondary career as a domestic humorist. Here too are Jackson's masterly short novels:The Haunting of Hill House(1959), the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant, andWe Have Always Lived in the Castle(1962), the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. Rounding out the volume are 21 other stories and sketches that showcase Jackson in all her many modes, and the essay Biography of a Story, Jackson's acidly funny account of the public reception of The Lottery, which provoked more mail from readers ofThe New Yorkerthan any contribution before or since.

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