Synopses & Reviews
Shirley Jackson, author of the classic short story
The Lottery, was known for her terse, haunting prose. But the writer possessed another side, one which is delightfully exposed in this hilariously charming memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont. Fans of
Please Don't Eat the Daisies,
Cheaper by the Dozen, and anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote will find much to recognize in Shirley Jackson's home and neighborhood: children who won't behave, cars that won't start, furnaces that break down, a pugnacious corner bully, household help that never stays, and a patient, capable husband who remains lovingly oblivious to the many thousands of things mothers and wives accomplish every single day.
"Our house," writes Jackson, "is old, noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books." Jackson's literary talents are in evidence everywhere, as is her trenchant, unsentimental wit. Yet there is no mistaking the happiness and love in these pages, which are crowded with the raucous voices of an extraordinary family living a wonderfully ordinary life.
Continuously in print since 1948, Jackson's Haunting of Hill House has been bought by Dreamworks.
Review
“Everything this author wrote . . . has in it the dignity and plausibility of myth. . . . Shirley Jackson knew better than any writer since Hawthorne the value of haunted things.” The New York Times Book Review
Review
“Shirley Jackson was a bright, crafty . . . very impressive maker of stories . . . Come Along With Me is a kind of memorial to her . . . an engaging volume.” Chicago Sunday Times
Review
“Leaves no doubt as to Miss Jackson’s craftsmanship and power . . . utterly convincing detail that breaks down the reader’s disbelief.” Granville Hicks, Saturday Review
Synopsis
A haunting and psychologically driven collection from Shirley Jackson that includes her best-known story "The Lottery"
At last, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" enters Penguin Classics, sixty-five years after it shocked America audiences and elicited the most responses of any piece in New Yorker history. In her gothic visions of small-town America, Jackson, the author of such masterworks as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, turns an ordinary world into a supernatural nightmare. This eclectic collection goes beyond her horror writing, revealing the full spectrum of her literary genius. In addition to Come Along with Me, Jackson's unfinished novel about the quirky inner life of a lonely widow, it features sixteen short stories and three lectures she delivered during her last years.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators."
Synopsis
The classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers-and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
Synopsis
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis,
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.
Synopsis
A haunting and psychologically driven collection from Shirley Jackson that includes her best-known story "The Lottery" At last, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" enters Penguin Classics, sixty-five years after it shocked America audiences and elicited the most responses of any piece in New Yorker history. In her gothic visions of small-town America, Jackson, the author of such masterworks as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, turns an ordinary world into a supernatural nightmare. This eclectic collection goes beyond her horror writing, revealing the full spectrum of her literary genius. In addition to Come Along with Me, Jackson's unfinished novel about the quirky inner life of a lonely widow, it features sixteen short stories and three lectures she delivered during her last years.
About the Author
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) received wide critical acclaim for her short story "The Lottery," which was first published in the New Yorker in 1948. Her novels include We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Sundial, and The Haunting of Hill House. Laura Miller is a cofounder of Salon.com, where she is a senior writer. She is the editor of The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors and the introducer of the Penguin Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House.
Table of Contents
PrefaceCOME ALONG WITH ME
FOURTEEN STORIES
Janice
Tootie in Peonage
A Cauliflower in Her Hair
I Know Who I Love
The Beautiful Stranger
The Summer People
Island
A Visit
The Rock
A Day in the Jungle
Pajama Party
Louisa, Please Come Home
The Little House
The Bus
THREE LECTURES, WITH TWO STORIES
Experience and Fiction
The Night We All Had Grippe
Biography of a Story
The Lottery
Notes for a Young Writer