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Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Her writing career spanned over two decades, during which she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories.
- The Haunting of Hill House Was Inspired by Real-Life Paranormal Investigators.
- Shirley Jackson Consulted A Book by A Paranormal Researcher.
- Jackson Made An Unsettling Discovery While Researching Haunted houses.
- There Were Multiple Versions of The Haunting of Hill House’s Eleanor.
- The Haunting of Hill House Is A Ghost Story Without The Ghosts.
- Jackson’s Husband Was Too Afraid to Read The Haunting of Hill House.
- The Haunting of Hill House Has Earned Comparisons to The Turn of The Screw.
- Roald Dahl Sent Jackson A Letter After Reading The Haunting of Hill House.
- The Haunting of Hill House Was Jackson’s First Profitable Novel.
- Jackson Sold The Film Rights to The Haunting of Hill House For $67,500.
Jackson was inspired to write the novel after reading about a group of 19th century “psychic researchers” who rented a house they believed to be haunted in order to study paranormal phenomena. The researchers studiously recorded their experiences in the house in order to present them in the form of a treatise to the Society for Psychic Research. In...
In 1958, Jackson was working on Hill House when she read a newspaper article about a Long Island family experiencing poltergeist activity, which mentioned the book Haunted People, co-written by parapsychologist Nandor Fodor. Jackson read the book and made use of some of the incidents in it when writing Hill House. Fodor would later serve as a consu...
Before she began writing The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson searched magazines and newspapers for photos of houses that seemed haunted. During her research, she stumbled upon a photo of a house in California that had a particular air of “disease and decay.” She was so struck by it, she asked her mother, who lived in California, if she could find a...
In A Rather Haunted Life, Shirley Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin writes that Jackson initially struggled to decide what kind of character her protagonist, Eleanor, would be. Jackson wrote three different iterations of Eleanor. One, according to Franklin, was “a spinster with a swagger”—a far cry from the introverted Eleanor of the finished novel.
Jackson often referred to the novel as a “good ghost story” despite the fact that it doesn’t have any overt ghosts. “The House isthe haunting,” Jackson explained in her notes for the novel. While much of the novel is left ambiguous, Jackson was clear about the connections between Hill House and her protagonist, Eleanor. “Jackson clearly intended th...
Jackson’s husband Stanley Edgar Hyman was a well-known literary critic and professor who enthusiastically read all of his wife’s books—but not The Haunting of Hill House. According to Franklin, “For the first time he refused to read her manuscript: He found the concept of ghosts too frightening.”
Since its release, critics and fans have drawn comparisons between The Haunting of Hill House and the writings of everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to Hilary Mantel. But the comparison that comes up the most is to Henry James’s classic novella The Turn of the Screw. In her introduction to The Haunting of Hill House, Laura Miller explains that the two n...
Legendary children’s author Roald Dahl was so struck by The Haunting of Hill House, he wrote to Jackson suggesting she write for television. According to Jackson biographer Lenemaja Friedman, Dahl asked her to “consider writing a script for a television show that Ellyn Williams was doing in Britain.” It’s unclear whether Dahl himself was working on...
The Haunting of Hill House wasn’t just Jackson’s most popular novel: It was her first profitable novel. “Hill Housewas a financial and critical triumph," Franklin writes. “For the first time, a novel of [Jackson’s] had finally earned back its advance and was even making a profit.”
When Jackson sold the movie rights to Hill Housefor $67,500 (“an astronomical fee for the time,” Franklin notes), it propelled her family into true financial stability for the first time. They used the money from the film to buy living room drapes, a player piano, and a washing machine and dryer.
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The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been made into two feature films (The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise, and its remake), a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series.
- Shirley Jackson
- 1959
Sep 26, 2024 · Shirley Jackson was an American novelist and short-story writer best known for her story “The Lottery” (1948). Jackson graduated from Syracuse University in 1940 and married the American literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman.
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Mar 3, 2017 · Secret Histories: On Shirley Jackson. by Heather Clark. On June 27, 1948, Shirley Jackson published “The Lottery” in The New Yorker. Savagery unfolds slowly in this strange, spare story about a ritual stoning in a New England village. Jackson opens with images of blossoming flowers and “richly green” grass.
