Shirley Jackson Research Paper

Shirley Jackson, the author of many great novels and short stories today. She was born in San Francisco, California to Geraldine and Leslie Jackson, on December 14th, 1916. She grew up having a wealthy lifestyle, as her great-grandfather made a family fortune by building houses in San Francisco. When she was a teenager she eventually moved to the East coast and later attended Syracuse University. In 1940, Shirley Jackson accomplished a lot. First, she received a bachelor of arts degree from Syracuse. After college, she married her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman and later moved to Vermont with him. A few years later, after having written a few pieces of literature, one eventually made its way into the New Yorker during the year of 1943. This began to shape her future as a writer. Her pieces began showing up in magazines, newspapers, and more. This is when Shirley Jackson became well known and began writing more frequently.

Shirley Jackson began writing short story after short story, after novel after novel.

She wrote mostly horror stories, based on many different things; her family life, abnormal witchcraft, and phycology. But, most of her books were about people who loved being in their home and who feared the outside work, this relates to her experiences, her feelings about leaving home, and her phobia. No matter what she based each of her stories on, the way she wrote with such a great word choice, and economy of style it began to form a picture that would eventually create an amazing story. She published her first novel in 1948, The road through the wall. Also, in 1948 she published a short story, The Lottery. This cause many people to question the deeper meaning of the stories and it eventually became one of the most significant stories during this time. She began to write many, many more novels and stories throughout her writing

career.
Shirley Jackson was the wife of Stanley Edgar Hyman. He was a literary critic who worked at Bennington college. They later had four children together. She was devoted to her family and did not care that much about the political and outside world. Throughout her life she suffered from agoraphobia, this is where one is nervous to leave their own home. As her life went on it intensified severely and her final years, she couldn't even get past her front lawn. She passed away from heart failure at the age of 48, on August 8, 1965. When she passed away she was in the middle of writing two novels. Her kids later became editors and edited her unpublished works as a way to commemorate her and her beautiful pieces of writing.