4.0
The Letters of Shirley Jackson
ByPublisher Description
A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS • “This biography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson’s legacy.”—Joyce Carol Oates
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.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS • “This biography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson’s legacy.”—Joyce Carol Oates
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities27 Reviews
4.0
Laiz Cajegas
Created about 1 month agoShare
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“I felt so many things while reading this book. I felt a nameless sense of dread in the early years of her romance with her future husband. I wanted to scream at her and tell her to stop and not marry him because he was no good. But I loved her children so much and loved reading about all their family adventures. I was so taken with their ideal picture of family life that I felt the rug was pulled from under me when I read her unsent letter to her husband, detailing all his abuse. There had been many little signs of this, of course, through the years but I had been distracted by their children and thought marriage had cured him of his ways. So I ended the book feeling angry at him. However, reading this book inspired me to go back to writing and gave me a picture of what a writer's life might be like. Shirley was such an incredibly intelligent, warm, talented and witty woman. I want to learn more about her so I'm reading her biography next and all her books too!
P.S. I gave it a 3.5 rating because it would have been lovely to include several responses to her letters just to get the narration to flow better. It's a bit slow-paced but if you like slice of life style books, then this might be a good one for you”
Earthshaped
Created about 2 months agoShare
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abbey mcclurkin
Created 3 months agoShare
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“I’ve always been so so on Shirley Jackson’s actual books, but I think I need to revisit this opinion because WOW
Her letters, written to many people in her life, throughout her life, are amazing. Even if you’ve never read a Shirley Jackson book, maybe especially then, you should read her letters.”
Tania
Created 4 months agoShare
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“Me ha encantado este viaje. No soy muy fan de leer cartas, suelo aburrirme bastante si no están filtradas y también está el componente de incomodidad cuando no sabes si fueron publicadas de forma consentida (En el caso de Shirley si)... pero cuando admiras tanto a quien las escribe es inevitable esa pulsión de querer saber más y más. Y, desde luego, aquí he encontrado más de todo. Más de su ironía y humor, más del proceso de escritura, de sus idas y venidas con los bloqueos, del germen de algunas de sus historias o de cómo ella lidiaba con su recepción. También más sobre su vida personal, claro. Momy issues, salud mental, maternidad, gordofobia, su relación con Stanley, amistad con otras mujeres,... Mucho ya lo conocía por la biografía de Ruth Franklin pero ha sido impactante leer algunas cartas, especialmente las que nunca llegó a mandar. Y, un poco como con sus libros, me he reído, me ha cautivado con sus rarezas, su lucidez y su encanto personal y, al final, me ha dejado el corazón un poco roto.
Mi admiración ya ha sobrepasado este plano de la realidad y vuela hacia la fantasía...”
About Shirley Jackson
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.
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.
Other books by Shirley Jackson
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