Shirley Jackson American Poet Shirley Jackson Poetry

Shirley Jackson
Prolific American Writer
1919-1965

Biography
Critisism
Review
Works

Time Line

1916 Shirley Hardie Jackson is born, December 14, in San Francisco, CA.

1933 Jackson family moves to Rochester, NY.

1940 Jackson receives her BA in English from Syracuse University and marries writer Stanley Edgar Hyman.

1941 Jackson publishes her first short story, "My Life with R.H. Macy," in The New Republic.

1945 Jackson and Hyman move to North Bennington, VT where Hyman teaches at Bennington College. Jackson's writing career flourishes with many magazine publications she also publishes several collections of her stories.

1965 Jackson dies on August 8th in Bennington.

Biography

Shirley Jackson was born in 1919, in San Francisco, California. Her mother was a housewife and her father was an employee of a lithographing company. Most of her early life was spent in Burlingame, California. As a child, Shirley was already interested in writing. At age twelve she won a poetry prize, and in high school she began keeping a diary to record her writing progress.

After high school she shortly attended University at Rochester and left because of her mental depression, which did recur numerous times throughout her later years. Shirley tried the best she could to recover from her mental illness by living quietly at home and writing. In 1937 she attended Syracuse University, where she published many stories in the student literary magazine. Also, while at Syracuse University she met a man by the name of Stanley Edgar Hyman, who became a good friend and later a noted literary critic. Three years later, in 1940 Shirley and Stanley were happily married and Shirley also received her degree. They soon had four children and both continued active literary careers. They settled and raised their family in a large Victorian house in Vermont, where Hyman taught literature at Bennington College.

Shirley Jackson's first national publication was a humorous story, "My Life with R.H. Macy," which appeared in The New Republic in 1941. Jackson wrote everyday with a disciplined schedule. She sold her stories to magazines and published three novels. Her best-known work was "The Lottery." Click here for a list of her works. Shirley still refused to take herself as a serious writer. Jackson thought writing was "great fun" and she loved it.

Shirley Jackson died in Bennington on August 8,1965. Since her death, several of Shirley Jackson's collections have been published by her husband as well as her children.

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