Search Worlds Without End

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.

This is the 1976 Popular Library paperback edition of this 1951 novel. "Hangsaman," Jackson's second novel, contains certain elements similar to the mysterious real-life December 1946 disappearance of 18-year-old Bennington College sophomore Paula Jean Welden of Stamford, Connecticut. This event, which remains unsolved to this day, took place in the wooded wilderness of the Glastenbury Mountain near Bennington in southern Vermont, where Jackson and her family were living at the time. The fictional college depicted in Hangsaman is based in part on Jackson's experiences at Bennington College.

The stories in this edition represent the great diversity of her work, from humor to her shocking explorations of the human psyche. The tales range, chronologically, from the writings of her college days and residence in Greenwich Village in the early 1940s, to the unforgettably chilling stories from the period just before her death. They provide an exciting overview of the evolution of her craft through a progression of forms and styles, and add significantly to the body of her published work.

Just an Ordinary Day is a testament to how large a talent Shirley Jackson had and to the depth, breadth, and complexity of her writing. Though this remarkable literary life was cut short, Jackson clearly established a unique voice that has won a permanent place in the canon of outstanding American literature, and remains a powerful influence on generations of readers and writers.

"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." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness.

In this 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 with The 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, and We 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 of The New Yorker than any contribution before or since.

Elizabeth is a demure twenty-three-year-old wiling her life away at a dull museum job, living with her neurotic aunt, and subsisting off her dead mother's inheritance. When Elizabeth begins to suffer terrible migraines and backaches, her aunt takes her to the doctor, then to a psychiatrist. But slowly, and with Jackson's characteristic chill, we learn that Elizabeth is not just one girl--but four separate, self-destructive personalities.

The Bird's Nest, Jackson's third novel, develops hallmarks of the horror master's most unsettling work: tormented heroines, riveting familial mysteries, and a disquieting vision inside the human mind.

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.

"The Lottery" is a short story written by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It has been described as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature".

The story describes a fictional small town in contemporary America which observes an annual rite known as "the lottery". The purpose of the lottery is to choose a human sacrificial victim to be stoned to death to ensure the community's continued well being.

It has been anthologized many times, and can also be found in the collection The Lottery and Other Stories.

It was the basis for the 1996 TV Movie The Lottery.

The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jack son's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

Table of Contents:

• The Intoxicated - non-genre - (1949)
• The Daemon Lover - (1949)
• Like Mother Used to Make - non-genre - (1949)
• Trial by Combat - non-genre - (1944)
• The Villager - non-genre - (1944)
• My Life with R. H. Macy - non-genre - (1941)
• The Witch - non-genre - (1949)
• The Renegade - non-genre - (1948)
• After You, My Dear Alphonse - non-genre - (1943)
• Charles - non-genre - (1948)
• Afternoon in Linen - non-genre - (1943)
• Flower Garden - non-genre - (1949)
• Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors - non-genre - (1949)
• Colloquy - non-genre - (1944)
• Elizabeth - non-genre - (1949)
• A Fine Old Firm - non-genre - (1944)
• The Dummy - non-genre - (1949)
• Seven Types of Ambiguity - non-genre - (1946)
• Come Dance with Me in Ireland - non-genre - (1943)
• Of Course - non-genre - (1949)
• Pillar of Salt - (1948)
• Men with Their Big Shoes - non-genre - (1947)
• The Tooth - (1949)
• Got a Letter from Jimmy - non-genre - (1949)
• The Lottery - (1948)
• James Harris, the Daemon Lover - (1949) - poem by uncredited (variant of The Demon Lover 1737)

A generous selection of her work, consisting of three complete books The Birds Nest, Life Among the Savages, and eleven short stories including the world-famous The Lottery. Selected, and with an introduction, by Stanley Edgar Hyman (her husband).

Shirley Jackson's first novel tells the tale of Pepper Street and its houses and families. The wall surrounding an estate is torn down to make a road and this single action creates a most memorable drama for many of the people affected by this simple act. An excellent beginning for one of the most important authors of the second half of the 20th century.

Jackson's macabre and satirical end-of-the-world novel wherein only the distinctly odd occupants of the old Halloran mansion in a small New England village will survive to begin the human race all over again.

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.