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The Letters of Shirley Jackson
A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among America's greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad.
"I am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as Grand Central Station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet."
Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs, and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson's writing over nearly three decades.
"The novel is getting sadder. It's always such a strange feeling—I know something's going to happen, and those poor people in the book don't; they just go blithely on their ways."
Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson's own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson—writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife—up to the light.
Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among America's greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad.
"I am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as Grand Central Station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet."
Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs, and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson's writing over nearly three decades.
"The novel is getting sadder. It's always such a strange feeling—I know something's going to happen, and those poor people in the book don't; they just go blithely on their ways."
Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson's own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson—writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife—up to the light.
602 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 13, 2021
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About the author
Shirley Jackson
341 books11.3k followersShirley Jackson was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.
She is best known for her dystopian short story, "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown America. In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" was published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse."
Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that "she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies", but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb", to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as revealed by Hyman's statement that she "was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned The Lottery', and she felt that they at least understood the story".
In 1965, Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep, at her home in North Bennington Vermont, at the age of 48.
She is best known for her dystopian short story, "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown America. In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" was published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse."
Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that "she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies", but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb", to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as revealed by Hyman's statement that she "was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned The Lottery', and she felt that they at least understood the story".
In 1965, Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep, at her home in North Bennington Vermont, at the age of 48.
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June 7, 2021
Before reading this collection of Shirley Jackson’s letters, I had never read anything by the author. Having read this, I can now say I am a fan of her writing. If her letters were this interesting I can only imagine how amazing her other works must be. She turns mundane activities like going to the dentist and the nuances of her children’s lives into a compelling tale. She could have written a grocery list and I probably would have been completely engrossed.
This book is a vast collection of letters that Shirley Jackson wrote over the course of nearly three decades from the time of her youth to six days before she passed away. Some of her earliest letters were to her future husband, Stanley, to her parents whom she consistently addressed as “mom and pop”, to her various agents and publishing friends, to fans, to her friends, and later, to her children as they got older. In her letters, Shirley chose to copy Stanley’s style and write in lowercase letters with little punctuation because she wasn’t a fan of the semicolon. Who is?
I loved reading all her letters, but some that stand out to me were her letters to Stanley when they were young. She was very bold and did not shy away from discussing Stanley’s other girlfriends that he had while being committed to Shirley.
Medicine seems like it was trial and error back then, at least for Shirley. In one letter she writes how she became sick with a throat infection and was told to drink hydrogen peroxide! It’s no shock that that made her much worse until she saw a specialist who told her that was “wrong wrong wrong.” Or, how when she was due to go into labour years later, another doctor told her to drink castor oil mixed with a drink she didn’t like because she would never want to have that drink again. So she mixed half a glass of castor oil with another half of cream soda. Yum.
As her children grew up, I enjoyed reading her letters about them. She wrote a lot about how much money she was making from her short stories and books, which surprisingly was never enough. It made me wonder how much other authors of her caliber were making at the time.
There was one letter Shirley wrote later in her life to her husband that made me feel sad for her that Stanley was belittling her and her achievements. Another letter she wrote to herself was equally heartbreaking. It seems that Stanley was against her writing about anything that didn’t bring in money. She had to coach herself to be strong. In her forties, Shirley started experiencing severe anxiety and agoraphobia that she eventually sought help for from a therapist.
This collection was a tome that I ended up taking my time with by reading about fifty pages a day, usually on the weekends. I am now excited to go back and read her other works now that I have a lot of insight into her writing process.
I could go on and on about the letters of Shirley Jackson, but I’ll stop here and hope you end up reading this collection and loving it as much as I did!
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the digital ARC.
This book is a vast collection of letters that Shirley Jackson wrote over the course of nearly three decades from the time of her youth to six days before she passed away. Some of her earliest letters were to her future husband, Stanley, to her parents whom she consistently addressed as “mom and pop”, to her various agents and publishing friends, to fans, to her friends, and later, to her children as they got older. In her letters, Shirley chose to copy Stanley’s style and write in lowercase letters with little punctuation because she wasn’t a fan of the semicolon. Who is?
I loved reading all her letters, but some that stand out to me were her letters to Stanley when they were young. She was very bold and did not shy away from discussing Stanley’s other girlfriends that he had while being committed to Shirley.
Medicine seems like it was trial and error back then, at least for Shirley. In one letter she writes how she became sick with a throat infection and was told to drink hydrogen peroxide! It’s no shock that that made her much worse until she saw a specialist who told her that was “wrong wrong wrong.” Or, how when she was due to go into labour years later, another doctor told her to drink castor oil mixed with a drink she didn’t like because she would never want to have that drink again. So she mixed half a glass of castor oil with another half of cream soda. Yum.
As her children grew up, I enjoyed reading her letters about them. She wrote a lot about how much money she was making from her short stories and books, which surprisingly was never enough. It made me wonder how much other authors of her caliber were making at the time.
There was one letter Shirley wrote later in her life to her husband that made me feel sad for her that Stanley was belittling her and her achievements. Another letter she wrote to herself was equally heartbreaking. It seems that Stanley was against her writing about anything that didn’t bring in money. She had to coach herself to be strong. In her forties, Shirley started experiencing severe anxiety and agoraphobia that she eventually sought help for from a therapist.
This collection was a tome that I ended up taking my time with by reading about fifty pages a day, usually on the weekends. I am now excited to go back and read her other works now that I have a lot of insight into her writing process.
I could go on and on about the letters of Shirley Jackson, but I’ll stop here and hope you end up reading this collection and loving it as much as I did!
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the digital ARC.
November 10, 2021
Shirley Jackson conjured up some of the most chilling tales in American literature. It is known she suffered from agoraphobia, had a drinking problem, her husband was a womanizer and that she died of a heart attack at the age of 48. Just prior to reading "The Letters of Shirley Jackson" I caught "Shirley", a 2020 biopic portraying a creepy woman in a "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" family drama. I was braced to deal with a lot of gloom when opening this 620 page challenge.
Nothing prepared me for the woman I found in this collection. We meet an effervescent young woman of twenty-one writing bubbly letters to her sweetheart and friends. We see her sharp humor and wit, her goofy little doodles and sketchings... who knew this woman had a sense of humor? She was a loving mother who wrote family fare for Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and McCalls. While she battled with agoraphobia at times, she also drove her own automobile and enjoyed being active in the lecture circuit. Shirley was no zombie.
As with any author, we are privy to the struggles she had while writing. About "The Haunting of Hill House" she wrote "The novel is getting sadder. It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their ways." I felt the same way about this book. There had been only the slightest clue of trouble between Shirley and her husband Stanley up until this point. The view we get from her letters is what she is surface-sharing with her family, friends and business associates. Finally there is the bombshell letter she writes to Stanley expressing how lonely he has made her with his fooling around and his lack of respect for her, often calling her "a tedious bore".
In a letter to herself, Shirley writes over and over that she will not be intimidated by Stanley's harsh judgment of her serious work. "i will do what I am set to do and nothing else. i will not be afraid. i will not be afraid. i will do what i am set to do and nothing else. i will not be afraid. ever again. i will not be afraid. i will not be afraid. i will not." (She rarely uses any capitalization in her letters)
"The Lottery", "The Haunting of Hill House", and "We Have Always Lived in this Castle" were all delivered by an artist who can not be restricted to a genre status. It is a tragedy this wonderful woman suffered such physical and mental torment in the final years of her short life. These letters help fill out the flesh and blood of a national treasure.
I want to thank Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #TheLettersofShirleyJackson #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishing
On November 10, 2021 I am posting this on NetGalley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookBub, KOBO, Waterstones, Twitter and Facebook
Nothing prepared me for the woman I found in this collection. We meet an effervescent young woman of twenty-one writing bubbly letters to her sweetheart and friends. We see her sharp humor and wit, her goofy little doodles and sketchings... who knew this woman had a sense of humor? She was a loving mother who wrote family fare for Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and McCalls. While she battled with agoraphobia at times, she also drove her own automobile and enjoyed being active in the lecture circuit. Shirley was no zombie.
As with any author, we are privy to the struggles she had while writing. About "The Haunting of Hill House" she wrote "The novel is getting sadder. It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their ways." I felt the same way about this book. There had been only the slightest clue of trouble between Shirley and her husband Stanley up until this point. The view we get from her letters is what she is surface-sharing with her family, friends and business associates. Finally there is the bombshell letter she writes to Stanley expressing how lonely he has made her with his fooling around and his lack of respect for her, often calling her "a tedious bore".
In a letter to herself, Shirley writes over and over that she will not be intimidated by Stanley's harsh judgment of her serious work. "i will do what I am set to do and nothing else. i will not be afraid. i will not be afraid. i will do what i am set to do and nothing else. i will not be afraid. ever again. i will not be afraid. i will not be afraid. i will not." (She rarely uses any capitalization in her letters)
"The Lottery", "The Haunting of Hill House", and "We Have Always Lived in this Castle" were all delivered by an artist who can not be restricted to a genre status. It is a tragedy this wonderful woman suffered such physical and mental torment in the final years of her short life. These letters help fill out the flesh and blood of a national treasure.
I want to thank Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #TheLettersofShirleyJackson #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishing
On November 10, 2021 I am posting this on NetGalley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookBub, KOBO, Waterstones, Twitter and Facebook
February 22, 2022
This is a must read for any Shirley Jackson fans, and for anyone interested in writers and writing. It’s a whopper at 600 pages, and covers her letters from the age of 21 until she died in 1965, age 48.
What is so wonderful to see, although I suppose not that surprising is that she writes about different things to different people. We hear about how well her children are doing when she writes to her parents, about needing more money from her publishers when she writes to her literary agent, and perhaps with more truth about her life when she writes to a fan who becomes a friend. Then, suddenly there is a letter to her husband, Stanley which was probably never sent. The shock of this letter is tremendous.
I also loved getting snippets about how her writing was going, especially those about my favourite Jackson novel, We have Always Lived in the Castle.
There was a nice five degrees of separation moment for me when Jackson’s son, Barry meets the son of the English sculptor, Anthony Caro, when Caro was teaching at Bennington where Stanley taught. Barry goes to stay with them in England. Many years later, when I was studying sculpture at Winchester School of art, I met Caro when he came and gave a guest lecture.
What is so wonderful to see, although I suppose not that surprising is that she writes about different things to different people. We hear about how well her children are doing when she writes to her parents, about needing more money from her publishers when she writes to her literary agent, and perhaps with more truth about her life when she writes to a fan who becomes a friend. Then, suddenly there is a letter to her husband, Stanley which was probably never sent. The shock of this letter is tremendous.
I also loved getting snippets about how her writing was going, especially those about my favourite Jackson novel, We have Always Lived in the Castle.
There was a nice five degrees of separation moment for me when Jackson’s son, Barry meets the son of the English sculptor, Anthony Caro, when Caro was teaching at Bennington where Stanley taught. Barry goes to stay with them in England. Many years later, when I was studying sculpture at Winchester School of art, I met Caro when he came and gave a guest lecture.
April 16, 2021
“dear mrs. white, if you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree. sincerely, shirley jackson”. July 24, 1957.
I am a Shirley Jackson fan. I remember watching The Lottery when I was in grade school. It was the early 1970s, and I was just happy that the nuns were not showing another religious film strip. That is my only memory of it, but I remember the name: Shirley Jackson. As an adult, I have watched The Haunting (1963) many times, always marveling how that banging was the most frightening thing I had ever experienced in a movie. It was then that I sought out The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and read my very first purely horrific novel (I realized part of me was Eleanor!). In The Letters of Shirley Jackson (edited by her eldest son Laurence Jackson Hymen), I was treated to an inside look of her as she wrote these and many of her other books and articles. I read every single letter, afraid I would miss something. Because, as her son states, she enjoyed writing these as much—at times more—as writing fiction. It shows.
The Letters of Shirley Jackson contains 300 letters sent to 20 people spanning 27 years (1938-1965). Some of the recipients include her parents, children, friends, agents, publishers, and fans. Many of these letters read like her fiction, “blurring the boundary between reality and fiction” (Introduction written by Bernice M. Murphy). The letters are, as her son Laurence Jackson Hyman, “The self-reported account of a short and extremely creative life.” However, the content of these letters does not reveal the real life she experienced with her husband, Stanley Hyman. Instead of recounting his affairs, demeaning comments, and lack of involvement with the family, we read about his attentiveness, support, and engagement with the children and home.
We learn a lot about Shirley Jackson, much of it sad. She suffered from severe anxiety and agoraphobia, at times unable to leave her home for months. She used prescribed drugs to help her until 1963, when she finally chose to start psychoanalysis. She had several periods of ill-health, suffering a coronary event in 1956, two bouts of colitis in 1960 and 1961, pneumonia in 1965, and then her death August 8, 1965 from another coronary event. She drank a lot and had an unhealthy relationship with her body and food, which did not help any of the above.
The most heart-wrenching letters are the ones that she did not send. Shirley received a letter from her mother in which she criticizes her daughter’s appearance, says her husband and children are ashamed of her, and that she is ungrateful and thoughtless. Shirley wrote a letter (September 25, 1962) in which she takes her mother to task for her comments, asking when will she “realize that i am a grown up”, and stating “i have just had enough of the unending comments on my appearance and my faults.” Another was to her husband, Stanley (November 1962?) where she predicts he’ll start a fight so that he can, “…arrange to go off to new york in december in a state of domestic warfare, justifying you in whatever big city plans you can make.” The last letter is the one to herself (1963) where she writes, “it is now clear to me—after a year spent hoping and endeavoring to make sense from an impossible situation—that stanley intends at all costs to obstruct my serious writing in any way he can. he is perfectly happy with my money-writing (magazines) happy to think that after so much work i have at last achieved a point where i can make a great deal of money, which he cannot, by simply writing…he will not allow me to write anything in which I feel that i am doing more than only writing for money.”
She closes the letter with the repeated phrases of: “i will be not afraid. i will do what I am set to do and nothing else. i will not.”
Although I received the electronic book free, I have pre-ordered the hard copy of the book. I want to savor it as a written testimony on paper; just like she wrote it. It would also allow me easy access to and from the copious endnotes.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read and review this book.
I am a Shirley Jackson fan. I remember watching The Lottery when I was in grade school. It was the early 1970s, and I was just happy that the nuns were not showing another religious film strip. That is my only memory of it, but I remember the name: Shirley Jackson. As an adult, I have watched The Haunting (1963) many times, always marveling how that banging was the most frightening thing I had ever experienced in a movie. It was then that I sought out The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and read my very first purely horrific novel (I realized part of me was Eleanor!). In The Letters of Shirley Jackson (edited by her eldest son Laurence Jackson Hymen), I was treated to an inside look of her as she wrote these and many of her other books and articles. I read every single letter, afraid I would miss something. Because, as her son states, she enjoyed writing these as much—at times more—as writing fiction. It shows.
The Letters of Shirley Jackson contains 300 letters sent to 20 people spanning 27 years (1938-1965). Some of the recipients include her parents, children, friends, agents, publishers, and fans. Many of these letters read like her fiction, “blurring the boundary between reality and fiction” (Introduction written by Bernice M. Murphy). The letters are, as her son Laurence Jackson Hyman, “The self-reported account of a short and extremely creative life.” However, the content of these letters does not reveal the real life she experienced with her husband, Stanley Hyman. Instead of recounting his affairs, demeaning comments, and lack of involvement with the family, we read about his attentiveness, support, and engagement with the children and home.
We learn a lot about Shirley Jackson, much of it sad. She suffered from severe anxiety and agoraphobia, at times unable to leave her home for months. She used prescribed drugs to help her until 1963, when she finally chose to start psychoanalysis. She had several periods of ill-health, suffering a coronary event in 1956, two bouts of colitis in 1960 and 1961, pneumonia in 1965, and then her death August 8, 1965 from another coronary event. She drank a lot and had an unhealthy relationship with her body and food, which did not help any of the above.
The most heart-wrenching letters are the ones that she did not send. Shirley received a letter from her mother in which she criticizes her daughter’s appearance, says her husband and children are ashamed of her, and that she is ungrateful and thoughtless. Shirley wrote a letter (September 25, 1962) in which she takes her mother to task for her comments, asking when will she “realize that i am a grown up”, and stating “i have just had enough of the unending comments on my appearance and my faults.” Another was to her husband, Stanley (November 1962?) where she predicts he’ll start a fight so that he can, “…arrange to go off to new york in december in a state of domestic warfare, justifying you in whatever big city plans you can make.” The last letter is the one to herself (1963) where she writes, “it is now clear to me—after a year spent hoping and endeavoring to make sense from an impossible situation—that stanley intends at all costs to obstruct my serious writing in any way he can. he is perfectly happy with my money-writing (magazines) happy to think that after so much work i have at last achieved a point where i can make a great deal of money, which he cannot, by simply writing…he will not allow me to write anything in which I feel that i am doing more than only writing for money.”
She closes the letter with the repeated phrases of: “i will be not afraid. i will do what I am set to do and nothing else. i will not.”
Although I received the electronic book free, I have pre-ordered the hard copy of the book. I want to savor it as a written testimony on paper; just like she wrote it. It would also allow me easy access to and from the copious endnotes.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read and review this book.
November 12, 2024
“We might say that we have far more to be afraid of today than the people of Salem ever dreamed of, but that would not really be true. We have exactly the same thing to be afraid of--the demon in men’s minds which prompts hatred and anger and fear, an irrational demon which shows a different face to every generation, but never gives up in his fight to win over the world.”
Note entitled “To a Young Reader” for the re-publication of The Witchcraft of Salem Village
I haven’t read many collections of writer’s letters--this may be the first one I’ve read all the way through. I always thought of it as a scholarly sort of thing. But if my experience with this is any indication, if you love an author, it is a way to feel you’re getting to know them, in the most extraordinarily personal way. We readers often say we wish we could go back and talk to our favorite writers, and while this was a one-way conversation, I found being immersed in Shirley’s words a magical experience. I think from now on she’ll feel like an old friend.
This is a huge book. The first (very long) section is made up of her early letters while she was in college and dating her future husband Stanley. Reading the ups and downs of their relationship got a little tedious, but they’re endlessly more entertaining than my letters from that time of life I’m sure!
It seems Shirley had to fight hard for her writing career. Even her best friend was brutal.
“is it fair for her to tell me over and over that I couldn’t write a novel if I tried the rest of my life, that I’m making a dmn fl out of myself by trying, that no one really believes I can write, however polite they may be, and that even if I could write I’ve never produced anything to prove it? true as it might be, it doesn’t help much.”
It was inspiring to watch her fight for it, and once she got to writing regularly, it was fascinating to hear her process.
“I am all excited about doing a new book, a nasty little novel full of mean people who hate each other …” (The Sundial)
My favorite parts were when she discussed the writing of The Haunting of Hill House.
“I am so excited over the way the novel is going that I keep sneaking back to it, during lunch, or late at night, to add just one more page. What I will do is get as far as I can before mailing it to you, and hope to get it to a point where something happens. As I tried to explain yesterday over the phone it has to start slowly because it is going to get so crazy so fast, and because the people and the house must be fairly well known before the ghosts show up. I have a note for later on which reads ‘Hand beckoning? Dog in fits? Moan?’”
The big surprise to me was how entertaining I found her writing about her family. Similar to Life Among the Savages, but even more personal somehow, Shirley made it seem like the plot of a novel, as I watched the family grow and change and each child turn into their own person.
Now that I’ve slipped into the role of pen-pal with Shirley, as reading this made me feel, I’m determined to read all of her other words, anywhere I can find them. I don’t want to miss a thing.
Note entitled “To a Young Reader” for the re-publication of The Witchcraft of Salem Village
I haven’t read many collections of writer’s letters--this may be the first one I’ve read all the way through. I always thought of it as a scholarly sort of thing. But if my experience with this is any indication, if you love an author, it is a way to feel you’re getting to know them, in the most extraordinarily personal way. We readers often say we wish we could go back and talk to our favorite writers, and while this was a one-way conversation, I found being immersed in Shirley’s words a magical experience. I think from now on she’ll feel like an old friend.
This is a huge book. The first (very long) section is made up of her early letters while she was in college and dating her future husband Stanley. Reading the ups and downs of their relationship got a little tedious, but they’re endlessly more entertaining than my letters from that time of life I’m sure!
It seems Shirley had to fight hard for her writing career. Even her best friend was brutal.
“is it fair for her to tell me over and over that I couldn’t write a novel if I tried the rest of my life, that I’m making a dmn fl out of myself by trying, that no one really believes I can write, however polite they may be, and that even if I could write I’ve never produced anything to prove it? true as it might be, it doesn’t help much.”
It was inspiring to watch her fight for it, and once she got to writing regularly, it was fascinating to hear her process.
“I am all excited about doing a new book, a nasty little novel full of mean people who hate each other …” (The Sundial)
My favorite parts were when she discussed the writing of The Haunting of Hill House.
“I am so excited over the way the novel is going that I keep sneaking back to it, during lunch, or late at night, to add just one more page. What I will do is get as far as I can before mailing it to you, and hope to get it to a point where something happens. As I tried to explain yesterday over the phone it has to start slowly because it is going to get so crazy so fast, and because the people and the house must be fairly well known before the ghosts show up. I have a note for later on which reads ‘Hand beckoning? Dog in fits? Moan?’”
The big surprise to me was how entertaining I found her writing about her family. Similar to Life Among the Savages, but even more personal somehow, Shirley made it seem like the plot of a novel, as I watched the family grow and change and each child turn into their own person.
Now that I’ve slipped into the role of pen-pal with Shirley, as reading this made me feel, I’m determined to read all of her other words, anywhere I can find them. I don’t want to miss a thing.
August 13, 2022
4.75
Reading these letters was an enjoyable experience, if not a completely new one, since they inform much of Ruth Franklin’s biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Some of the middle-period letters seem very familiar because they are of family stories that Jackson works into her two humorous memoirs.
Shirley’s wit and humor are prevalent, and the letters are especially fascinating when she talks of her writing. I loved the mentions of visits by Ralph Ellison and his wife Fanny, letters thanking him for photographs he’s taken of Shirley's children, one of whom Ralph and his wife are godparents.
At a certain point Shirley knew her letters would be saved for posterity; her husband Stanley's idea, she tells her parents. Several letters are sad, even uncomfortable: the early letters to her future husband as she tries to negotiate her jealousy over his open infidelity; the letters to her parents presenting a happier existence than the reality; the letter to a fan who’s become a dear friend, bewildered as to why her friend has stopped writing; and the shorter letters near the end, because the tone has changed and I knew what was coming. Most wrenching are the two letters she doesn’t give to their intended recipients—her husband and her mother, the two dominating forces of her life.
If I sometimes wished for a tiny bit more context for a few of the letters (I have the biography for that), or for snippets of some of the letters Shirley was responding to—which perhaps no longer exist and would’ve made the already-600-page volume unwieldy anyway—I’m grateful for all I got.
Reading these letters was an enjoyable experience, if not a completely new one, since they inform much of Ruth Franklin’s biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Some of the middle-period letters seem very familiar because they are of family stories that Jackson works into her two humorous memoirs.
Shirley’s wit and humor are prevalent, and the letters are especially fascinating when she talks of her writing. I loved the mentions of visits by Ralph Ellison and his wife Fanny, letters thanking him for photographs he’s taken of Shirley's children, one of whom Ralph and his wife are godparents.
At a certain point Shirley knew her letters would be saved for posterity; her husband Stanley's idea, she tells her parents. Several letters are sad, even uncomfortable: the early letters to her future husband as she tries to negotiate her jealousy over his open infidelity; the letters to her parents presenting a happier existence than the reality; the letter to a fan who’s become a dear friend, bewildered as to why her friend has stopped writing; and the shorter letters near the end, because the tone has changed and I knew what was coming. Most wrenching are the two letters she doesn’t give to their intended recipients—her husband and her mother, the two dominating forces of her life.
If I sometimes wished for a tiny bit more context for a few of the letters (I have the biography for that), or for snippets of some of the letters Shirley was responding to—which perhaps no longer exist and would’ve made the already-600-page volume unwieldy anyway—I’m grateful for all I got.
December 26, 2021
The letters develop an intimacy, pulling back the curtain not only to her office but to her entire life--marital, parental, filial, health and wealth, relations with editors and writerly friends. She's charming and witty--well worth the effort.
September 25, 2021
30 years 600plus pages so many letters so little punctuation or capitalization so many stars though recommend to any Jackson fan
.
.
July 13, 2021
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) is remembered for her peerless crafting of psychological suspense and horror short stories ("The Lottery") and novels (WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE). But she had another side: long before Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck, she essentially created the mommy blog genre with her affectionate and humorous magazine pieces on raising four children. This collection of nearly 300 lengthy letters spanning 27 years ranges in content from lighthearted family anecdotes to serious discussions of her writing process, family drama, writer's block, insomnia, agoraphobia, psychoanalysis and health problems.
The critical acclaim and popularity of Jackson's 1959 novel THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE finally brought financial security, but her marriage was precarious. A 1960 letter to her husband reads like a shotgun blast of pent-up frustration, anger and hurt. "I also do not believe you realize the brutality of your constant small reminders, to me and the children, of our insignificance," she writes. "You once wrote me a letter... telling me that I would never be lonely again. I think that was the first, the most dreadful, lie you ever told me."
While Jackson labored over her published prose, her massive missives seem to flow effortlessly. Yet, her letters captivate with the same sly, caustic humor, clever attention to detail and inventive phrasing that mark her best writing. At nearly 700 pages, readers are unlikely to find a book that moves with more assured swiftness than THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON. This is a bountiful offering fans will treasure.
Shirley Jackson's letters are just as compelling and beautifully written as her best novels.
The critical acclaim and popularity of Jackson's 1959 novel THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE finally brought financial security, but her marriage was precarious. A 1960 letter to her husband reads like a shotgun blast of pent-up frustration, anger and hurt. "I also do not believe you realize the brutality of your constant small reminders, to me and the children, of our insignificance," she writes. "You once wrote me a letter... telling me that I would never be lonely again. I think that was the first, the most dreadful, lie you ever told me."
While Jackson labored over her published prose, her massive missives seem to flow effortlessly. Yet, her letters captivate with the same sly, caustic humor, clever attention to detail and inventive phrasing that mark her best writing. At nearly 700 pages, readers are unlikely to find a book that moves with more assured swiftness than THE LETTERS OF SHIRLEY JACKSON. This is a bountiful offering fans will treasure.
Shirley Jackson's letters are just as compelling and beautifully written as her best novels.
July 27, 2021
The Letters of Shirley Jackson begins in 1938, with Shirley Jackson—an impish college student fond of tweaking her conservative parents by pretending she's a communist—desperately in love with fellow Syracuse undergraduate Stanley Hyman and aspiring to become a writer. It ends in 1965, shortly before Jackson's death, after having reached a career high with the bestselling We Have Always Lived in the Castle, overcoming both a two-year bout of agoraphobia and a vicious case of writer's block, and thoroughly fed up with, and ready to step away from, decades of Hyman's neglect and emotional abuse.
Jackson's letters to family, friends, and agents reflect the complexity of both her domestic and literary life. Although husband Hyman was a Bennington professor, his salary was so negligible that Jackson had to act as the couple's (and later family's) breadwinner by pumping out story after short story while attempting to write the novels she thought of as her true literary legacy. She also had to manage the chaotic household of four children solo; Hyman is portrayed as not even having the drive to heat up a can of soup.
I suppose it's to the credit of editor Laurence Hyman—Jackson and Hyman's eldest son—that he's unafraid to allow Stanley Hyman to remain the persistent antagonist of Jackson's letters. He's always hovering in the background, calculating to the penny how much time and potential income each frivolous letter is subtracting from the household income. (While simultaneously, it has to be noted, instructing her to remind her recipients to save the letters so they can make the family some cash after her death.)
Jackson portrays Hyman as increasingly toxic over the decades; he seethes with envy at the attention and good reviews her literary career consistently attracts over his own. The afflictions that prevented Jackson from leaving her home late in life likely grew out of his blatant infidelities, including an affair with her own best friend. The growing anger culminates in a scorching late-life missive Jackson writes (yet never delivers) to her husband in which she elaborates a near-lifetime of his failures and disappointments. "you once wrote me a letter...telling me that i would never be lonely again," she tells him. With bitter accuracy, she concludes "i think that was the first, the most dreadful, lie you ever told me."
Despite the continuing theme of Hyman's inadequacies as both a husband and a literary partner, there's a lot of love and humor in Jackson's collected letters. It's tempting for readers to think of the four Hyman offspring preserved forever as elementary school-aged in the literary amber of Jackson's two domestic memoirs (Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons). In the letters, though, we see not only the original germs of stories that developed into the memoirs (and it's fun to witness the extent to which Jackson felt free to fictionalize them), but to see Laurie become a dad of two, Jannie to become a boy-obsessed teen, Sally to become a moody adolescent, and Barry to grow old enough not to need a teddy bear.
Jackson's letters are often laugh-aloud funny, too: I'm never going to be able to forget the image of Hyman and Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison feeding Jackson an ungodly concoction of castor oil, cream soda, and cookies in order to induce labor with an overdue child, only for them to figure out that they'd calculated the baby's arrival date incorrectly. There's also a racy story involving Jackson, the prim author of a Cherry Ames-like series of books for girls, and a would-be author for Playboy at a writer's conference that's such a muddle of misunderstandings that it borders on a top-speed, slamming-doors sex farce.
I didn't know that a collection of Jackson's letters was exactly what I needed as a lifelong admirer. Everything I esteem about Jackson's writing is found in abundance within the volume, however—the humor, the anger, the sense of alienation and otherness. Although it's tough to witness the author's impediments—particularly the largest, whom she married—readers will finish the volume convinced in Jackson's own sense of professionalism and accomplishment, and in her pride in storytelling.
Jackson's letters to family, friends, and agents reflect the complexity of both her domestic and literary life. Although husband Hyman was a Bennington professor, his salary was so negligible that Jackson had to act as the couple's (and later family's) breadwinner by pumping out story after short story while attempting to write the novels she thought of as her true literary legacy. She also had to manage the chaotic household of four children solo; Hyman is portrayed as not even having the drive to heat up a can of soup.
I suppose it's to the credit of editor Laurence Hyman—Jackson and Hyman's eldest son—that he's unafraid to allow Stanley Hyman to remain the persistent antagonist of Jackson's letters. He's always hovering in the background, calculating to the penny how much time and potential income each frivolous letter is subtracting from the household income. (While simultaneously, it has to be noted, instructing her to remind her recipients to save the letters so they can make the family some cash after her death.)
Jackson portrays Hyman as increasingly toxic over the decades; he seethes with envy at the attention and good reviews her literary career consistently attracts over his own. The afflictions that prevented Jackson from leaving her home late in life likely grew out of his blatant infidelities, including an affair with her own best friend. The growing anger culminates in a scorching late-life missive Jackson writes (yet never delivers) to her husband in which she elaborates a near-lifetime of his failures and disappointments. "you once wrote me a letter...telling me that i would never be lonely again," she tells him. With bitter accuracy, she concludes "i think that was the first, the most dreadful, lie you ever told me."
Despite the continuing theme of Hyman's inadequacies as both a husband and a literary partner, there's a lot of love and humor in Jackson's collected letters. It's tempting for readers to think of the four Hyman offspring preserved forever as elementary school-aged in the literary amber of Jackson's two domestic memoirs (Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons). In the letters, though, we see not only the original germs of stories that developed into the memoirs (and it's fun to witness the extent to which Jackson felt free to fictionalize them), but to see Laurie become a dad of two, Jannie to become a boy-obsessed teen, Sally to become a moody adolescent, and Barry to grow old enough not to need a teddy bear.
Jackson's letters are often laugh-aloud funny, too: I'm never going to be able to forget the image of Hyman and Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison feeding Jackson an ungodly concoction of castor oil, cream soda, and cookies in order to induce labor with an overdue child, only for them to figure out that they'd calculated the baby's arrival date incorrectly. There's also a racy story involving Jackson, the prim author of a Cherry Ames-like series of books for girls, and a would-be author for Playboy at a writer's conference that's such a muddle of misunderstandings that it borders on a top-speed, slamming-doors sex farce.
I didn't know that a collection of Jackson's letters was exactly what I needed as a lifelong admirer. Everything I esteem about Jackson's writing is found in abundance within the volume, however—the humor, the anger, the sense of alienation and otherness. Although it's tough to witness the author's impediments—particularly the largest, whom she married—readers will finish the volume convinced in Jackson's own sense of professionalism and accomplishment, and in her pride in storytelling.
August 26, 2022
It was really cool to get such an inside look at the authors life! To see the ups and downs of being a writer from the 40s to the 60s. I really liked seeing how her life progressed and made me feel like I knew her so much more than I already did.
I do feel this book went on a long though. It’s nice to West Reed I was definitely ready for to be done by the time I reached the last page. Kind of a too much of a good thing I guess. I’m glad I got a chance to read it but I doubt I’ll be re-reading this one anytime soon.
I do feel this book went on a long though. It’s nice to West Reed I was definitely ready for to be done by the time I reached the last page. Kind of a too much of a good thing I guess. I’m glad I got a chance to read it but I doubt I’ll be re-reading this one anytime soon.
June 9, 2023
Five stars are not enough.
I need a cupful.
I need a cupful.
June 26, 2023
I just love her, ok??
February 26, 2022
I have been listening to the letters for the last several days. Makes my head spin knowing all she and her husband did and all she packed into forty-eight short years!
Absolutely fascinating!
The audiobook was well done, by all and a joy to listen to.
Absolutely fascinating!
The audiobook was well done, by all and a joy to listen to.
June 17, 2021
There were two times while reading this ARC about Shirley Jackson that I wanted to cry. The first time was when I saw that the letters to Stanley Hyman, which cover the first 18% of the Kindle edition, are an unreadable mess. The second time was during the last 10% of the book when I knew the letters would end soon, because Shirley Jackson was going to die soon, and there would be no more letters to anyone.
Let’s look at the first part of the ARC . . . since Ms. Jackson often wrote letters without using capitalization, her eldest son Laurence Hyman thought they should be printed that way. Well, there is a reason that correct capitalization, grammar, and punctuation are important when publishing a book. Namely, those things help the reader to easily read what was written, which in turn helps the reader to better understand what the writer was saying and thinking.
Mr. Hyman obviously does not feel that way, but stated in his intro that the letters were not correctly capitalized . . . obviously as well as not correctly punctuated or grammatically corrected . . . for this book because: “Shirley’s habit of writing most everything in lowercase has been preserved here because it reflects her personality nearly as much as the letters’ contents.” It reflects her “playfulness”. Sure. While having such a difficult time trying to make out what was being said in the letters, I felt nothing but happiness as Ms. Jackson’s personality and playfulness shined through the mess. The heck with what she was actually saying in the letters! That’s trivial.
After trying to read the letters to Stanley Hyman, after then starting to skim them, I eventually gave up. Forget it. It’s the editor’s job to clean up messy manuscripts, not the reader’s job. In addition, should they have been published in the first place? Just because a writer becomes famous does not mean everything she or he ever wrote should be published. No writer would want that, except an extremely narcissistic one. Shirley Jackson never struck me as being that way. Instead, she seemed to be someone genuinely concerned about her personal privacy not being invaded by the public. It was her husband who repeatedly told her to make sure to tell her parents to keep her letters to them. One suspects he was thinking of future publication and payment, because he always seemed to see his wife as a cash cow and treated her accordingly. For example, since her letters weren't going to provide current cash, he repeatedly reprimanded her for using her writing time to write them in the first place!
Correct capitalization was also not used in the many letters to her parents, but those were usually not difficult to read, because she was not rambling in a free association way. It’s important to note, however, that those letters to her mother did not reflect the true relationship between them. Only one unsent letter in the book expressed Ms. Jackson’s bitterness about her mother’s lifelong criticism of her looks and weight. Same with the letters where Stanley was mentioned; from reading them you would think she didn’t mind him seeing her as a cash cow; and they didn’t have major marital problems, which they certainly did, as only one or two letters to him reflected. This is another sign that she valued her personal privacy, knowing her letters would one day be made public. She so often sugarcoated her correspondence.
Hence, it may be best to see this book, after the first 18%, simply as a nice time spent with Shirley Jackson, enjoying all her funny stories; the descriptions of her children growing up; the antics of her cats and dogs; the progression of her writings; the trips and socializing; the large house problems and joys; the friends and parents; the book, magazine and movie contracts; the music; the seasons in Vermont, etc. Getting towards the end of the book was truly sad, knowing it would soon state she died in her sleep during her afternoon nap one day. No more letters, no more stories, no more books, no more Shirley . . . .
P.S. For a better understanding of Shirley Jackson’s life, do read Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson and Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Unfortunately, the first one is no longer in print, so you will either have to find it in a library or buy a used copy. It is definitely worth the search. Years ago, I found it in my local library, and recently got a used copy at Amazon at a fair price and in excellent used condition.
(Note: I received a free e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.)
Let’s look at the first part of the ARC . . . since Ms. Jackson often wrote letters without using capitalization, her eldest son Laurence Hyman thought they should be printed that way. Well, there is a reason that correct capitalization, grammar, and punctuation are important when publishing a book. Namely, those things help the reader to easily read what was written, which in turn helps the reader to better understand what the writer was saying and thinking.
Mr. Hyman obviously does not feel that way, but stated in his intro that the letters were not correctly capitalized . . . obviously as well as not correctly punctuated or grammatically corrected . . . for this book because: “Shirley’s habit of writing most everything in lowercase has been preserved here because it reflects her personality nearly as much as the letters’ contents.” It reflects her “playfulness”. Sure. While having such a difficult time trying to make out what was being said in the letters, I felt nothing but happiness as Ms. Jackson’s personality and playfulness shined through the mess. The heck with what she was actually saying in the letters! That’s trivial.
After trying to read the letters to Stanley Hyman, after then starting to skim them, I eventually gave up. Forget it. It’s the editor’s job to clean up messy manuscripts, not the reader’s job. In addition, should they have been published in the first place? Just because a writer becomes famous does not mean everything she or he ever wrote should be published. No writer would want that, except an extremely narcissistic one. Shirley Jackson never struck me as being that way. Instead, she seemed to be someone genuinely concerned about her personal privacy not being invaded by the public. It was her husband who repeatedly told her to make sure to tell her parents to keep her letters to them. One suspects he was thinking of future publication and payment, because he always seemed to see his wife as a cash cow and treated her accordingly. For example, since her letters weren't going to provide current cash, he repeatedly reprimanded her for using her writing time to write them in the first place!
Correct capitalization was also not used in the many letters to her parents, but those were usually not difficult to read, because she was not rambling in a free association way. It’s important to note, however, that those letters to her mother did not reflect the true relationship between them. Only one unsent letter in the book expressed Ms. Jackson’s bitterness about her mother’s lifelong criticism of her looks and weight. Same with the letters where Stanley was mentioned; from reading them you would think she didn’t mind him seeing her as a cash cow; and they didn’t have major marital problems, which they certainly did, as only one or two letters to him reflected. This is another sign that she valued her personal privacy, knowing her letters would one day be made public. She so often sugarcoated her correspondence.
Hence, it may be best to see this book, after the first 18%, simply as a nice time spent with Shirley Jackson, enjoying all her funny stories; the descriptions of her children growing up; the antics of her cats and dogs; the progression of her writings; the trips and socializing; the large house problems and joys; the friends and parents; the book, magazine and movie contracts; the music; the seasons in Vermont, etc. Getting towards the end of the book was truly sad, knowing it would soon state she died in her sleep during her afternoon nap one day. No more letters, no more stories, no more books, no more Shirley . . . .
P.S. For a better understanding of Shirley Jackson’s life, do read Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson and Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Unfortunately, the first one is no longer in print, so you will either have to find it in a library or buy a used copy. It is definitely worth the search. Years ago, I found it in my local library, and recently got a used copy at Amazon at a fair price and in excellent used condition.
(Note: I received a free e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.)
July 28, 2021
Beautiful book, wonderfully presented, and it’s just chock-full of zillions of letters written by Shirley Jackson, and drawings drawn by Shirley Jackson, so what else can I say except… ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
April 9, 2024
What a wonderful read through. The letters here range from 1938 to the time of Jackson’s untimely death in 1965. In the beginning, we see most of her letters addressed to Stanley Hyman (who would later become her husband) and then transition to being mostly addressed to her parents and her agent. In between, we get some really funny letters to other people though: friends, her children, and even this brilliant clap back to a “complaining reader”:
July 24 [1957]
Dear Mrs. White,
If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree.
Sincerely,
Shirley Jackson
The letters drip with Jackson’s usual candor and wit. I greatly enjoyed gaining a larger insight in to Jackson’s day to day life, her thought process while writing, and particularly her thoughts about her own pieces of work: which were her favorites, what she thought about the characters, etc. Though I have read some of her work, I certainly have not read it all but this has encouraged me—as if I wasn’t interested before—to seek out the rest.
All in all, a fun read and I think Shirley and I would have made good friends.
July 24 [1957]
Dear Mrs. White,
If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree.
Sincerely,
Shirley Jackson
The letters drip with Jackson’s usual candor and wit. I greatly enjoyed gaining a larger insight in to Jackson’s day to day life, her thought process while writing, and particularly her thoughts about her own pieces of work: which were her favorites, what she thought about the characters, etc. Though I have read some of her work, I certainly have not read it all but this has encouraged me—as if I wasn’t interested before—to seek out the rest.
All in all, a fun read and I think Shirley and I would have made good friends.
July 26, 2022
Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors and I am so glad I read this. Her son did an incredible job compiling these letters. She was an amazing person and writer and reading them let me in to better understand her as a human being. She made me laugh, she made me sad, she made me want to give her a hug. She was also a brave, strong, talented, and underestimated woman in times that were troubled. She may not have marched but she was a strong supporter of civil rights in the way she treated people. I checked this out of the library but bought a copy for my own because this is a book I know I will revisit again. Whether or not you have read her novels this is an excellent book and I highly recommend it for the historical, artistical, and just plain human value of reading it.
July 27, 2021
I feel like I have spent a glorious, fulfilling week with my favourite person with us trading in truth and sharing our innermost feeling. Vulnerabilities. Truths. Hidden feelings. Complexities. Hopes. Dreams. Complex, real relationships. Love. Imagination.
I feel bereft. This woman and her words. Her lived experiences. I don’t think I have ever wished I knew someone in real life more.
Thank you to Laurence all of Shirley’s loved ones for allowing us to share in this magic
I feel bereft. This woman and her words. Her lived experiences. I don’t think I have ever wished I knew someone in real life more.
Thank you to Laurence all of Shirley’s loved ones for allowing us to share in this magic
February 9, 2023
I highly recommend this fantastic collection of Shirley Jackson’s letters. The day I received the “Letters of Shirley Jackson,” I decided to place the book in a spot where I could easily pick it up, read one or two letters, and put it back down in that same spot. However, once I opened the book and read the first letter, I was captivated. The book remained by my side until I finished reading the last letter. These letters are fascinating, funny, insightful, revealing Shirley Jackson’s life in a way that is endearing and heartbreaking. There are not enough words in the English language to describe how wonderful these letters are. This book includes letters Shirley Jackson wrote throughout her life, beginning with letters she wrote to her parents while in college, her love letters to her future husband, letters to her parents as a young mother, and letters she wrote to editors and friends.
Final comment…Shirley and her husband, Stanley, hosted many writers, literary agents, etc., to their home. Ralph Ellison was a frequent guest. She wrote one letter to her children at summer camp, telling them their father was dining with Jackie Robinson, who they should remember as someone who used to play baseball, because Stanley was writing an article about Jackie Robinson for the New Yorker.
Final comment…Shirley and her husband, Stanley, hosted many writers, literary agents, etc., to their home. Ralph Ellison was a frequent guest. She wrote one letter to her children at summer camp, telling them their father was dining with Jackie Robinson, who they should remember as someone who used to play baseball, because Stanley was writing an article about Jackie Robinson for the New Yorker.
May 24, 2021
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I could not make it through this book because the ebook I received was horribly designed and unreadable. Once I got to the letters, the pages were glitching and jumping around to different parts of the book as I was in the middle of a sentence. This happened multiple times. I had to keep backing out, finding the page I was at again, just to then have a glitch send me to another part of the book. Also, there are little * symbols next to certain words or people mentioned in the letters. When you click on the * to get more context, it brings you to a different page. When you try to back out of that page, it takes you out of the book entirely, then you have to scroll through all the pages, trying to find your place for the 100th time. By about the 100-page mark, I became so frustrated that I am giving up.
Additionally, I would have preferred to see Shirley's actual letters since the editor decided to transcribe them exactly as written. There might have been a problem with legibility, though, so that probably wasn't something they could do. However, even the transcribed version is hard to read. Shirley has the tendency to put 5-10 words together without putting spaces between them. It takes a minute to decipher what is being said. There was also a mysterious section in the ebook where words were overlapping, and the sentence was completely illegible. So, this book was such a hassle to read that it took all enjoyment out of the reading process.
Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors, but in the 100 pages I read, some things were brought up that made me feel a disconnect with her. I almost feel like if I read more, it would make me think less of her novels. In the introduction, it is stated that she wrote these letters with the intent of publishing them in the future. She even asked her parents to save the letters and send them back to her to get published. This aspect of Shirley I couldn't relate to and changed my opinion of her. I can't understand writing a heartfelt letter to a family member, not because you thought it was a nice gesture, but because you wanted it published. Maybe I'm just looking into things too much, but I didn't want my opinion of Shirley Jackson to be soured by what was mentioned in this book. This is another aspect of why I decided to DNF.
Overall, the glitches were unbearable, I had no enjoyment while reading, and I felt some negativity surrounding some of the content of the book. If you are a fan of Shirley Jackson and can get your hand on a physical copy, I say go for it. The digital version is not suitable for the way the book is set up. I cannot give a star rating for book content, but for reader experience, it was a 1-star.
I could not make it through this book because the ebook I received was horribly designed and unreadable. Once I got to the letters, the pages were glitching and jumping around to different parts of the book as I was in the middle of a sentence. This happened multiple times. I had to keep backing out, finding the page I was at again, just to then have a glitch send me to another part of the book. Also, there are little * symbols next to certain words or people mentioned in the letters. When you click on the * to get more context, it brings you to a different page. When you try to back out of that page, it takes you out of the book entirely, then you have to scroll through all the pages, trying to find your place for the 100th time. By about the 100-page mark, I became so frustrated that I am giving up.
Additionally, I would have preferred to see Shirley's actual letters since the editor decided to transcribe them exactly as written. There might have been a problem with legibility, though, so that probably wasn't something they could do. However, even the transcribed version is hard to read. Shirley has the tendency to put 5-10 words together without putting spaces between them. It takes a minute to decipher what is being said. There was also a mysterious section in the ebook where words were overlapping, and the sentence was completely illegible. So, this book was such a hassle to read that it took all enjoyment out of the reading process.
Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors, but in the 100 pages I read, some things were brought up that made me feel a disconnect with her. I almost feel like if I read more, it would make me think less of her novels. In the introduction, it is stated that she wrote these letters with the intent of publishing them in the future. She even asked her parents to save the letters and send them back to her to get published. This aspect of Shirley I couldn't relate to and changed my opinion of her. I can't understand writing a heartfelt letter to a family member, not because you thought it was a nice gesture, but because you wanted it published. Maybe I'm just looking into things too much, but I didn't want my opinion of Shirley Jackson to be soured by what was mentioned in this book. This is another aspect of why I decided to DNF.
Overall, the glitches were unbearable, I had no enjoyment while reading, and I felt some negativity surrounding some of the content of the book. If you are a fan of Shirley Jackson and can get your hand on a physical copy, I say go for it. The digital version is not suitable for the way the book is set up. I cannot give a star rating for book content, but for reader experience, it was a 1-star.
September 18, 2021
This book is beyond incredible and an absolute treasure. Shirley Jackson is one of my favourite writers ever and I couldn't wait to read her letters, to be able to learn even more about this brilliant woman and an extraordinary writer. There are letters written by young Shirley to her future husband Stanley Hyman; letters where she writes about her first stories, 'The Lottery' being sold and becoming a crazy success; letters to her friends and literary agents; incredibly personal and long letters to her parents and later also to her children, and more.
I loved getting an insight into her early thoughts on the great novels like The Bird's Nest, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and the others. Obviously, when I reached the end of the book, it left me in tears. I genuinely feel so grateful that this collection of letters exists and that Shirley's legacy lives on. I loved it and I love her. Shirley Jackson forever.
I loved getting an insight into her early thoughts on the great novels like The Bird's Nest, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and the others. Obviously, when I reached the end of the book, it left me in tears. I genuinely feel so grateful that this collection of letters exists and that Shirley's legacy lives on. I loved it and I love her. Shirley Jackson forever.
March 10, 2021
absolutely priceless
August 22, 2022
Notes from my reading of Shirley Jackson's letters:
- College-age Shirley writes remarkably well; her early letters have almost the same voice as her later letters, as well as many of her stories.
- It’s weird that Shirley and Stanley (her husband) like sports so much. She's constantly telling her parents or others about their experiences at baseball or football games, her hopes for her team's chances at the World Series, etc. When I imagine Shirley in her free time, I picture her practicing some light witchcraft, not cheering on her favorite batter.
- Shirley found Joyce's Ulysses to be a bore, which gives me some feeling of validation.
- Ralph Ellison was a close friend of Shirley and Stanley and wrote much of Invisible Man while staying with them.
-Shirley constantly wrote to her parents to ask for financial help. Even with her relative publishing success and Stanley's career as a professor at Bennington College, they always struggled to make ends meet.
-Stanley and Shirley had an open relationship, but not in the fun, modern sense. Stanley was a cheater and Shirley reluctantly allowed him to continue cheating with her knowledge. There are hints that many of his lovers were his students. (What a class act, eh?) There's no evidence that she engaged in any extramarital affairs.
-Stanley refused to read Hill House because he’s afraid of ghosts.
-Shirley LOVES the Wizard of Oz books and they come up constantly.
-Shirley, just like me, considered We Have Always Lived in the Castle to be her best work. She has good taste!
-In the end, I'm left with the same somber feeling: if she hadn't die of a heart attack at 48, what amazing literature would she have produced?
- College-age Shirley writes remarkably well; her early letters have almost the same voice as her later letters, as well as many of her stories.
- It’s weird that Shirley and Stanley (her husband) like sports so much. She's constantly telling her parents or others about their experiences at baseball or football games, her hopes for her team's chances at the World Series, etc. When I imagine Shirley in her free time, I picture her practicing some light witchcraft, not cheering on her favorite batter.
- Shirley found Joyce's Ulysses to be a bore, which gives me some feeling of validation.
- Ralph Ellison was a close friend of Shirley and Stanley and wrote much of Invisible Man while staying with them.
-Shirley constantly wrote to her parents to ask for financial help. Even with her relative publishing success and Stanley's career as a professor at Bennington College, they always struggled to make ends meet.
-Stanley and Shirley had an open relationship, but not in the fun, modern sense. Stanley was a cheater and Shirley reluctantly allowed him to continue cheating with her knowledge. There are hints that many of his lovers were his students. (What a class act, eh?) There's no evidence that she engaged in any extramarital affairs.
-Stanley refused to read Hill House because he’s afraid of ghosts.
-Shirley LOVES the Wizard of Oz books and they come up constantly.
-Shirley, just like me, considered We Have Always Lived in the Castle to be her best work. She has good taste!
-In the end, I'm left with the same somber feeling: if she hadn't die of a heart attack at 48, what amazing literature would she have produced?
November 9, 2021
Edited by her son Laurence Jackson Hyman, this collection of Shirley Jackson's letters is a labor of love, a tribute to her creativity, wit, and biting sense of humor, a detailed portrayal of their family life, and a time capsule.
Clocking in at over 600 pages, the introduction tells us the almost three hundred included letters were culled from a selection of over five hundred. She was prolific indeed. Some of the earliest letters, her love letters to Stanley, were so raw and emotional and earnest they felt too private to read. The sheer volume and content of the early Stanley letters (on her end, the book doesn't include letters *to* Shirley) remind the reader what writing love letters was like back in the old days: a) write the letter b) mail that letter and hardest of all c) the interminable wait for a response.
There are pointy pointed cartoon drawings, mostly depicting Stanley doing nothing, or reading the paper, while Shirley heroically holds the household together. There are repeating themes (money problems, lots of cocktail parties, lots of pride in the kids, trips to New York, her cars). Shirley was the driver in the family and loved her little convertibles, it was easy to picture her driving around campus with the top down.
The letters provide a lot of context for her novels and stories. The letters around the time she was writing The Haunting of Hill House are particularly creepy. She was doing research on haunted houses, there was an active poltergeist in Long Island at the time, she was writing late into the night, sometimes alone in the house.
The letters also provide a window into what it was like for a working woman in the 50s and 60s. Shirley was constantly balancing her writing career with keeping the family running, with neither side providing much support or acknowledgement of the other. One example - children at her son's school were only allowed to bring their lunches to school (vs. going home at lunchtime) if their mothers were working. Shirley had to prove that she was a professional, working writer in order to send her son to school with lunch. Hard to imagine now but the letters illustrate the dichotomy she lived through.
There's really a lot to digest here. I was in this book for six weeks and it makes me want to revisit her work. At the risk of this review being as long as the book itself I'll end now by saying it's a great insight to a brilliant artist and would highly recommend it as a companion piece to Ruth Franklin's 2016 biography to anybody wanting to dig deeper into Shirley Jackson.
My thanks to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.
Clocking in at over 600 pages, the introduction tells us the almost three hundred included letters were culled from a selection of over five hundred. She was prolific indeed. Some of the earliest letters, her love letters to Stanley, were so raw and emotional and earnest they felt too private to read. The sheer volume and content of the early Stanley letters (on her end, the book doesn't include letters *to* Shirley) remind the reader what writing love letters was like back in the old days: a) write the letter b) mail that letter and hardest of all c) the interminable wait for a response.
There are pointy pointed cartoon drawings, mostly depicting Stanley doing nothing, or reading the paper, while Shirley heroically holds the household together. There are repeating themes (money problems, lots of cocktail parties, lots of pride in the kids, trips to New York, her cars). Shirley was the driver in the family and loved her little convertibles, it was easy to picture her driving around campus with the top down.
The letters provide a lot of context for her novels and stories. The letters around the time she was writing The Haunting of Hill House are particularly creepy. She was doing research on haunted houses, there was an active poltergeist in Long Island at the time, she was writing late into the night, sometimes alone in the house.
The letters also provide a window into what it was like for a working woman in the 50s and 60s. Shirley was constantly balancing her writing career with keeping the family running, with neither side providing much support or acknowledgement of the other. One example - children at her son's school were only allowed to bring their lunches to school (vs. going home at lunchtime) if their mothers were working. Shirley had to prove that she was a professional, working writer in order to send her son to school with lunch. Hard to imagine now but the letters illustrate the dichotomy she lived through.
There's really a lot to digest here. I was in this book for six weeks and it makes me want to revisit her work. At the risk of this review being as long as the book itself I'll end now by saying it's a great insight to a brilliant artist and would highly recommend it as a companion piece to Ruth Franklin's 2016 biography to anybody wanting to dig deeper into Shirley Jackson.
My thanks to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.
October 24, 2023
When I saw this book floating around the internet I immediately knew I needed to get my hands on a copy and devour it. It’s not often you have a chance to dive into the personal correspondence of one of the horror greats and I was salivating instantly at the thought. And thankfully it did not disappoint! I loved every minute I spent between the pages of this book, getting an insight into Jackson’s personal life was just thrilling and I have even more respect for her as an author after reading this. Highly recommend this if you love Shirley Jackson!
abandoned
February 5, 2025Shirley Jackson is very charming but there were SO MANY LETTERS - maybe I'll come back to this book later
January 1, 2025
A fascinating glimpse into the life of my favorite writer.
August 23, 2021
Aside from the insight into Shirley's personal life, there are tidbits here about life in the 1930s thru 50s that made me pause and reflect. The liberal use of and references to alcohol consumption, even back when Shirley was 21 and still living with her parents, made me think about the fact that the first letters reproduced here were written just five years after the end of prohibition. Later, there's a reference to someone from the college where Stanley Hyman taught who died after only four days of sickness... from polio, which caused a local panic. I'm thankful that panic over polio was no longer the norm by the time I was born.
Mostly, though, it was the everyday life stuff that got me. While Stanley usually had a job of one sort or another-- with New Yorker magazine, at a college, writing books, etc, Shirley was like one of those plate spinners I used to watch on the Ed Sullivan Show. Shirley wrote stories and novels, hosted huge parties for neighbors and friends from the literary world, raised 4 kids, marveled at the wonder of finally having a washing machine or a working refrigerator, chauffeured the family (Stanley refused to learn how to drive), and read voraciously. There were at least half a dozen references in her letters to Stanley complaining that she was spending too much time on letters, when she should be writing something that would make some money. Not once does Shirley admit to replying “Shut up, Stanley, and incidentally, feel free to make the lion's share of the family income yourself, if you think you can manage it” but I hope she did. Oh, and the last straw concerning Stanley: He did not like cats, or at least would not hold them or let them sit on his lap. Stanley would have hated the internet, I guess.
It was startling how normal the letters were, from such an extraordinary writer. Kids, malfunctioning cars and appliances, moving house, new jobs, new cars. Even the last letter, written only 8 days before she died, was heartrendingly mundane. Her agoraphobia was always described in a matter-of-fact style that never delved into how it made her feel. Just “I can't leave the house”, and “the doctor gave me pills”, and then it was back to complaining about her typewriter, or the weather.
Reading Shirley's work, or reading about her, automatically makes me sad, because I think of all the magnificent novels and stories she could have written had she lived longer. But there are a lot of smiles to be found in this compilation as well. When she was under contract at Farrar Straus, she mentioned having lunch with a Mr. Giroux, with whom she was unfamiliar. I'll bet he did okay for himself in the publishing biz. Shirley and Stanley seemed to primarily listen to jazz (although they discovered a love for Elvis), but my heart went pitter pat when she mentioned loving the duo Flanders and Swann. Now I will think of Shirley every time I hear "The Hippopotamus Song".
Recommended for anyone who has more than a passing interest in her novels or stories.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 19, 2023
Totally and completely O B S E S S E D.
I cannot believe I read 600 pages of letters Shirley Jackson wrote in her lifetime, and am left wanting more. (For the record: this book inspired me to write long letters to at least four separate friends detailing the mundane activities of my life in the most fun tone I could conjure. So, thanks, Shirley.)
I have many thoughts. Bear with me.
I think my favorite letters were the ones Shirley wrote to her future husband Stanley in 1938-40, when she was in her early 20s. They are so ALIVE and spunky and fun. I laughed out loud many times. But of course, it made her later letters to Stanley (rare) that much more heartbreaking.
I found the most enjoyment reading about letters that talked about the works of hers that I have read (The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle). I can imagine someone who has read a lot more of her works would just be over the moon. I LOVED little tidbits like Eleanor was originally named Erica, and Merricat was originally named Jenny — and that she completely scraped an awful draft of Castle and started all over. It was… very relatable.
The drawings and the letters about her household duties really make me wonder what would happen if Shirley Jackson was born in a different time, or perhaps was married to someone who wasn’t a prick (sorry not sorry). The fact that she was such a prolific writer in an age when she was also expected to run the household and manage 4 children is astounding. Her work ethic!!!!! I was also fascinated by her anxiety/agoraphobia in the early 1960s, and how she overcame it. I bow down to her 🙇♀️
“It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their way.” -Shirley Jackson about The Haunting of Hill House
That quote is exactly how I felt about reading this book, especially once we got to the 1960s. Her impending and untimely death loomed over all the letters, but of course she had no idea. She was robbed of many more decades, and we were robbed of many more incredible stories. At least this book was a wonderful way to honor her legacy, and I can only imagine it being such a gift for her son Laurence Jackson Hyman to put together (imagine combing through your mother’s letters from over sixty years ago, when so many of them detail your childhood and teenage years. Laurie is now in his 80s. Am I the only one who feels so sad about the passing of time?)
Lastly, I am glad this was a collection of letters rather than published diaries. It felt less invasive, especially as she asked her parents at one point to keep the letters so that they may be published one day. It ALSO felt like she was writing to me, and wouldn’t that be lovely!!!
I cannot believe I read 600 pages of letters Shirley Jackson wrote in her lifetime, and am left wanting more. (For the record: this book inspired me to write long letters to at least four separate friends detailing the mundane activities of my life in the most fun tone I could conjure. So, thanks, Shirley.)
I have many thoughts. Bear with me.
I think my favorite letters were the ones Shirley wrote to her future husband Stanley in 1938-40, when she was in her early 20s. They are so ALIVE and spunky and fun. I laughed out loud many times. But of course, it made her later letters to Stanley (rare) that much more heartbreaking.
I found the most enjoyment reading about letters that talked about the works of hers that I have read (The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle). I can imagine someone who has read a lot more of her works would just be over the moon. I LOVED little tidbits like Eleanor was originally named Erica, and Merricat was originally named Jenny — and that she completely scraped an awful draft of Castle and started all over. It was… very relatable.
The drawings and the letters about her household duties really make me wonder what would happen if Shirley Jackson was born in a different time, or perhaps was married to someone who wasn’t a prick (sorry not sorry). The fact that she was such a prolific writer in an age when she was also expected to run the household and manage 4 children is astounding. Her work ethic!!!!! I was also fascinated by her anxiety/agoraphobia in the early 1960s, and how she overcame it. I bow down to her 🙇♀️
“It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their way.” -Shirley Jackson about The Haunting of Hill House
That quote is exactly how I felt about reading this book, especially once we got to the 1960s. Her impending and untimely death loomed over all the letters, but of course she had no idea. She was robbed of many more decades, and we were robbed of many more incredible stories. At least this book was a wonderful way to honor her legacy, and I can only imagine it being such a gift for her son Laurence Jackson Hyman to put together (imagine combing through your mother’s letters from over sixty years ago, when so many of them detail your childhood and teenage years. Laurie is now in his 80s. Am I the only one who feels so sad about the passing of time?)
Lastly, I am glad this was a collection of letters rather than published diaries. It felt less invasive, especially as she asked her parents at one point to keep the letters so that they may be published one day. It ALSO felt like she was writing to me, and wouldn’t that be lovely!!!
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