Date of Birth: 14 December 1916
Place of Birth: San Francisco, California, USA
Date of Death: 8 August 1965
Place of Death: North Bennington, Vermont, USA
Main Occupations: writer
An American novelist and short story writer, best known for her mystery and horror writing. She was born in San Francisco, California though spent most of her life in New York City with her husband Stanley Edgar Hyman who she met while studying at Syracuse University, and later in Vermont. They both started writing for The New Yorker magazine where with Jackson published her earliest work. By all accounts, the marriage was a stressful one for Jackson thanks to Hyman’s infidelities with his students, perhaps contributing to her writing being preoccupied with women under extreme psychological duress.
Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical, The Road Through the Wall was published in 1948 but it was the publication of her short story The Lottery, first seen in The New Yorker on 26 June 1948 that made the biggest impact. The tale of a small country town where the residents take part in an annual lottery to decide who will be sacrificed for the good of that year’s crops, it was an instant sensation and has been adapted several times for various media. The magazine received hundreds of letters from outraged readers while others cancelled their subscriptions in protest. Both the magazine and Jackson herself were caught off guard by the reception, Jackson later recalling that “curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer – three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse.” She was later vindicated when the story became one of the best-loved and most revered of American short stories.
She continued to write short stories over the next decade, some of them collected as Life Among the Savages in 1953. Her next big hitter was the horror novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959), now regarded as one of the finest examples ever written and has also been adapted for film and television. Her last novel, the Gothic mystery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), is widely held to be her best work. She wrote many fantasy and horror short stories, while The Sundial (1958) is a borderline science fiction story.
By the late 1950s, her heavy smoking had led to chronic asthma and she was later diagnosed with a heart condition that caused dizziness and fainting. She also suffered severe anxiety and colitis, which made it difficult for her to travel. She was also using prescription barbiturates and amphetamines which may have made her anxiety worse. Her health began to fail until she died in her sleep in 1965 aged just 48, killed by either a coronary occlusion due to arteriosclerosis or cardiac arrest.
Genre filmography
- Cameo Theatre: The Lottery (1950) – based on the story by
- Fireside Theatre: The Lottery (1951) – based on the story by
- The Robert Herridge Theater: The Lottery (1960) – based on the story by
- The Haunting (1963) – based on the novel by
- The Lottery (1969) – based on the story by
- The Lottery (1996) – based on the story by
- The Haunting (1999) – based on the novel by
- The Lottery (2007) – based on the story by
- The Lottery (2008) – based on the story by
- The Lottery (2015) – based on the story by
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) – based on the novel by
- The Haunting of Hill House (2018) – based on the novel by
- Loteria (2022) – based on the story by
Periodicals
- Journal of Popular Film & Television vol.30 no.3 (Autumn 2002) pp.166-176 – illustrated article (Thrice-told tales: The Haunting, from Novel to Film…to Film by Steven Jay Schneider)
