Rocky Mountain Review, Volume 71, Number 1, Spring 2017, pp. Based on a wealth of previously undiscovered correspondence and dozens of new interviews, Shirley Jackson, with its exploration of astonishing talent shaped by a damaged childhood and a troubled marriage to literary critic Stanley Hyman, becomes the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary giant. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. There is magic in her books, and baffling magic some of it is, too. Placing Jackson within an American Gothic tradition of Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on "domestic horror" drawn from an era hostile to women. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life Ruth Franklin Shirley Jackson has always been an original who walks by herself, wrote Orville Prescott in his New York Times review of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author behind such classics as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. A genius of literary suspense, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America better than anyone. Still known to millions only as the author of the "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) remains curiously absent from the American literary canon. Summary: "This long-awaited biography establishes Shirley Jackson as a towering figure in American literature and revives the life and work of a neglected master.
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