Editing Shirley Jackson (section)

==="The Lottery" and early publications===
In 1948, Jackson published her debut novel, ''[[The Road Through the Wall]]'', which tells a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood growing up in [[Burlingame, California]], in the 1920s. Jackson's most famous story, "[[The Lottery]]", first published in ''The New Yorker'' on June&nbsp;26, 1948, established her reputation as a master of the horror tale.<ref name="ContempAuthors">"Shirley Jackson". ''[[Contemporary Authors]]''. Detroit: Gale, 2016. Retrieved via ''[[Gale Biography In Context]]'' database, October 24, 2016. "''The Haunting of Hill House'' has become one of the most respected haunted house stories."</ref> The story prompted over 300 letters from readers,{{sfn|Franklin|2016|p=231}} many of them outraged at its conjuring of a dark aspect of human nature,<ref name="ContempAuthors"/> characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse".{{sfn|Franklin|2016|p=221}} In the July 22, 1948, issue of the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'', Jackson offered the following in response to persistent queries from her readers about her intentions: "Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."{{sfn|Bloom|2009|pages=33–34}}

The critical reaction to the story was unequivocally positive; the story quickly became a standard in anthologies and was adapted for television in 1952.<ref name="DictAmerBio">"Shirley Hardie Jackson". ''Dictionary of American Biography''. New York: [[Charles Scribner's Sons]], 1981. Retrieved via ''[[Gale Biography In Context]]'' database, October 24, 2016.</ref> In 1949, "The Lottery" was published in a short story collection of Jackson's titled ''The Lottery and Other Stories''.{{sfn|Franklin|2016|pages=220, 257–259}}

Jackson's second novel, ''[[Hangsaman]]'' (1951), contained elements similar to the mysterious real-life December&nbsp;1, 1946, disappearance of an 18-year-old Bennington College sophomore [[Paula Jean Welden]]. This event, which remains unsolved to this day, took place in the wooded wilderness of [[Glastenbury Mountain]] near [[Bennington, Vermont|Bennington]] in southern Vermont, where Jackson and her family were living at the time. The fictional college depicted in ''Hangsaman'' is based in part on Jackson's experiences at Bennington College, as indicated by Jackson's papers in the Library of Congress.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?faid/faid:@field(DOCID+ms996001) |title=Shirley Jackson Papers |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=September 28, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Powers |first=Tim |title=Remember Paula Welden? 30 Years Ago |newspaper=Bennington Banner |date=December 1, 1976}}</ref> The event also served as inspiration for her short story "The Missing Girl" (first published in ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' in 1957, and posthumously in ''Just an Ordinary Day'' [1996]).

The following year, she published ''[[Life Among the Savages]]'', a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories based on her own life with her four children,{{sfn|Franklin|2016|pages=156–158}} many of which had been published prior in popular magazines such as ''[[Good Housekeeping]]'', ''[[Woman's Day]]'' and ''[[Collier's]]''.<ref name="DictAmerBio"/> Semi-fictionalized versions of her marriage and the experience of bringing up four children, these works are "true-to-life funny-housewife stories" of the type later popularized by such writers as [[Jean Kerr]] and [[Erma Bombeck]] during the 1950s and 1960s.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/books/review/shirley-jacksons-life-among-the-savages-and-raising-demons-reissued.html?_r=0 |title=Shirley Jackson's 'Life Among the Savages' and 'Raising Demons' Reissued |author=Franklin, Ruth |date=May 8, 2015 |website=The New York Times |access-date=February 13, 2017}}</ref>

Reluctant to discuss her work with the public, Jackson wrote in Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft's ''Twentieth Century Authors'' (1955):{{sfn|Kunitz|1973|p=483}}
{{blockquote|I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains, naturally, no pertinent facts. I was born in San Francisco in 1919 [sic] and spent most of my early life in California. I was married in 1940 to Stanley Edgar Hyman, critic and numismatist, and we live in Vermont, in a quiet rural community with fine scenery and comfortably far away from city life. Our major exports are books and children, both of which we produce in abundance. The children are Laurence, Joanne, Sarah, and Barry: my books include three novels, ''The Road Through the Wall'', ''Hangsaman'', ''[[The Bird's Nest (novel)|The Bird's Nest]]'' and a collection of short stories, ''The Lottery''. ''Life Among the Savages'' is a disrespectful memoir of my children.}}"The persona that Jackson presented to the world was powerful, witty, even imposing," wrote [[Zoë Heller]] in ''[[The New Yorker]].'' "She could be sharp and aggressive with fey Bennington girls and salesclerks and people who interrupted her writing. Her letters are filled with tartly funny observations. Describing the bewildered response of ''The New Yorker'' readers to 'The Lottery,' she notes, 'The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a [[Bendix Corporation|Bendix]] washing machine at the end would amaze you.{{'-}}"<ref name=":0" />