The Lottery and Other Stories - (FSG Classics) by Shirley Jackson

About the Book

"One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" created a sensation when it was first published in 1948. Now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, this lucid tale of a sleepy town's annual lottery--and the monstrous desires it awakens--endures as an essential classic of American fiction. The Lottery and Other Stories unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four wonderfully strange and equally terrifying short stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous--and showcase a true master at the height of her haunting powers"--Back cover.

Book Synopsis

Now celebrating its 75th anniversary, a trove of iconic horror stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson, "the master of the haunted tale" (The New York Times Book Review). Featuring an introduction by A. M. Homes.

One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" created a sensation when it was first published in 1948. This lucid tale of a sleepy town's annual lottery--and the monstrous desires it awakens--endures as an essential classic of American fiction.
The Lottery and Other Stories unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four wonderfully strange and equally terrifying short stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous--and showcase a true master at the height of her haunting powers.

Review Quotes

Praise for "The Lottery"

"'The Lottery' is a classic short story because of its power to unsettle us . . . Great writing can entertain, enlighten and even empower, but one of its greatest gifts to us is its ability to unsettle, prodding us to search for our own moral in the story."
-Ruth Franklin, The New York Times

"I read ['The Lottery'] in study hall, back at good old Lisbon High School. My first reaction: Shock. My second reaction: How did she do that?"
-Stephen King, author of Holly

"'The Lottery' was a consistent double feature in my nightmares."
-James DeMonaco, filmmaker of The Purge series

"I could shut the book, but the story kept murmuring."
-Stephen Graham Jones, author of Don't Fear the Reaper

"Shirley Jackson knew better than any writer since Hawthorne the value of haunted things."
--Guy Davenport, The New York Times Book Review

"Genuinely first-rate fiction . . . A ruthless fable about the human soul."
--Time

"An American classic . . . a bracing influence on artists prone to see the rot in the flower bed"
-Scott Heller, The New York Times

"Shirley Jackson managed to get to the core of something incredibly true, which is that people will be attacked, without mercy, and society will approve. Because it's something we've always done."
-Josephine Decker, filmmaker of Shirley

"That first read [of 'The Lottery']-- I laughed out loud to no one, then read it again immediately. It dead-stopped my heart."
-Levi Holloway, playwright of Grey House

"A classic."
-Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker

Praise for "The Lottery" and Other Stories

"The stories remind one of the elemental terrors of childhood."
--James Hilton, Herald Tribune

"In her art, as in her life, Shirley Jackson was an absolute original. She listened to her own voice, kept her own counsel, isolated herself from all intellectual and literary currents . . . She was unique."
--Newsweek

"Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written."
--Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch and The Secret History

"Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders."
--Dorothy Parker, Esquire

"I implore you not to read this story unless you can take a day or a week afterward to think about it. A great story, like a great vintage, throws a crust of sediment which may destroy- the bouquet and cause ulcers later. If you don't feel the tweak of the ulcers, you haven't really read this story."
--Christopher Morley, author of The Haunted Bookshop

"Perhaps more than anything else, the horror story or horror movie says it's okay to join the mob, to become the total tribal being, to destroy the outsider. It has never been done better or more literally than in Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery.'"
--Stephen King, Danse Macabre

"One of [the twentieth] century's most luminous and strange American writers . . . Shirley Jackson wrote about the mundane evils hidden in everyday life and about the warring and subsuming of selves in a family, a community, and sometimes even in a single mind."
--Jonathan Lethem, Salon

"Everything this author wrote . . . had in it the dignity and plausibility of myth . . . Shirley Jackson knew better than any writer since Hawthorne the value of haunted things."
--Guy Davenport, The New York Times Book Review

Praise for Shirley Jackson

"[Jackson] has a mystifying knack for illustrating the horrifying uncertainties around the basic laws of reality . . . This specific vulnerability--of the conscious, willful mind--is precisely what Jackson titillates and exacerbates in her stories."
--Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Lapvona

"Shirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers whose . . . work exerts an enduring spell."
--Joyce Carol Oates, Library of America

"There was just something so instinctive and eerie about [Jackson's] writing, and also [her] prose was so careful, that it just felt real in this way that was terrifying."
--Carmen Maria Machado, The Atlantic

"When I discovered Shirley Jackson, it was as if she'd understood what I wanted, what I needed, and set it all down on the page long before I was even born . . . When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name."
--Victor LaValle, Slate

About the Author

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) is a towering figure in twentieth-century gothic fiction. She is the author of many books and short stories, including The Haunting of Hill House, Hangsaman, Life Among the Savages, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and "The Lottery," which is considered to be her masterpiece.