Shirley Jackson

“Jackson is one of American fiction’s impossible presences, too material to be called a phantom in literature’s house, too in-print to be ‘rediscovered,’ yet hidden in plain sight. She’s both perpetually underrated and persistently mischaracterized as a writer of upscale horror, when in truth a slim minority of her works had any element of the supernatural. . . . Sterling in her craft, Jackson is prized by the writers who read her, yet it would be self-congratulatory to claim her as a writer’s writer. Rather, Shirley Jackson has thrived, at publication and since, as a reader’s writer.”—Jonathan Lethem

“Ten years ago, a reviewer sneered at the idea of Shirley Jackson having a place in the American literary canon. In the current literary landscape, such a reaction is no longer conceivable. Indeed, it would seem crazy to leave her out.”—Ruth Franklin

“The books that have profoundly scared me when I read them—made me want to sleep with the light on, made the neck hairs prickle and the goose bumps march, are few: Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, Stephen King’s It and Salem’s Lot and The Shining all scared me silly, and transformed the night into a most dangerous place. But Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House beats them all: a maleficent house, real human protagonists, everything half-seen or happening in the dark. It scared me as a teenager and it haunts me still, as does Eleanor, the girl who comes to stay.”—Neil Gaiman