The Lottery and Other Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Shirley Jackson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141191430 ISBN 13: 9780141191430

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2009

Synopsis

''Shirley Jackson''s stories are among the most terrifying ever written'' Donna Tartt

This is the definitive collection of Shirley Jackson''s short stories, including ''The Lottery'' - one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century, and an influence on writers such as Stephen King.

In these stories an excellent host finds himself turned out of home by his own guests; a woman spends her wedding day frantically searching for her husband-to-be; and in Shirley Jackson''s best-known story, a small farming village comes together for a terrible annual ritual. The creeping unease of lives squandered and the bloody glee of lives lost is chillingly captured in these tales of wasted potential and casual cruelty by a master of the short story.

Shirley Jackson''s chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird''s Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.

''Her stories are stunning, timeless - as relevant and terrifying now as when they were first published ... ''The Lottery'' is so much an icon in the history of the American short story that one could argue it has moved from the canon of American twentieth-century fiction directly into the American psyche, our collective unconscious'' A. M. Homes

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Jackson's great gift is not to create a world of fantasy and terror, but rather to discover the existence of the grotesque in the ordinary world. The grotesque is so powerful here just because it takes off from everyday life and constantly returns there until we do not know ourselves quite where we are."
        --Elizabeth Janeway

About the Author

Shirley Jackson was born in California in 1916. When her short storyThe Lotterywas first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the most iconic American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, The Sundial,The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. In addition to her dark, brilliant novels, she wrote lightly fictionalized magazine pieces about family life with her four children and her husband, the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep in 1965 at the age of 48.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141191430
• ISBN 13: 9780141191430
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320