The Letters of Shirley Jackson, is a mammoth undertaking by Jackson’s son Laurence Hyman, assisted by his three siblings, along with Shirley Jackson historian Bernice Murphy to compile correspondence spanning over thirty years of Jackson’s life—from her days as young college student up to her final letter six days before her untimely death at age 48 from a heart attack. These letters and line drawings, thankfully preserved by Jackson’s family and associates at the advice of her agents and lawyers, serve as the closest we will ever get to a true Shirley Jackson autobiography.

In the 621 pages of this book, you finally get to meet the real Shirley Jackson. Not only do you see glimpses of the Jackson that we’ve become familiar with— a loving, devoted mother of four sharing tales of domestic life, as well as the wickedly brilliant writer of some of the revered novels of the past century, but you also learn about her the Shirley we never got to know. She voiced her fears and frustrations as a writer in letters to her agent and publishers. We read numerous letters of domestic life with her husband Stanley Hyman and their four children and their life in Vermont sent to her parents and friends to keep them up to date on their comings and goings. Heartbreakingly, you see Shirley’s growing agoraphobia, the pain caused by turmoil in not only her marriage caused by Stanley’s infidelity and harsh criticism of her work, and the slow descent in health leading up to her death.

This was my favorite of all the books I read in 2021. I read through it greedily, wanting to know more about my hero and idol, to hear her own thoughts in her words. As much as I loved the book and learning more about Shirley, my heart was breaking knowing that the closer I got to the end of the book would also be the end of her life. And with this book, as in life, I wish we had more.

5/5 Stars
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions of the work and its author are my own.

I am a huge fan of Shirley Jackson, and this was a pleasure to read. It felt like getting to listen to her own thoughts, and gain a little extra perspective on one of my favourite authors. I also thought that it was a fascinating look at the "female experience" for women in her time period. What a great read!

This was such an interesting read and I learned so much about Shirley Jackson from her letters that I had no clue about. The only "issue" I had was that this book was super long so I had to skim through some of the parts. I'll probably get the print version at some point to read through it in my own pace.

This was an interesting look into the life and writings of one of the most popular female writers of her generation. I have been reading her since my early high school days. Her stories are some of the most prolific horror and speculative fiction: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We All Lived in the Castle, etc. These letters are a bit dense when read all at once together, but overall were incredibly interesting to delve into.

Wow. This is a really remarkable book. In so many ways, reading these vast collection of letters - both personal (to her boyfriend [later her husband] and to her parents) and professional (to her agent and to publishers) - is a better autobiography than if she'd sat down to write specifically about her life. We get a pretty honest look at her personal life - from her snarky letters to then-boyfriend Stanley to the raising of her children to her feelings about the fact that her son and his girlfriend/fiancé are living together and then are expecting a child before their wedding (as well as how that doesn't go well with the young woman's family). Everyday occurrences, from driving to child-care are covered.

Based on this, she would seem to have a pretty common life. But we also get letters that she's written to agents and publishers and editors. Also the occasional fan or letter-writer. A fair number of these are requests for money or questions about when will the money come in. Because, we learn, that Shirley's writing is the main source of income for the Jackson's and there's always a need for a new dishwasher or a new car or to pay off a creditor.

From the business letters, we learn about publishing numbers and advance sales and being selected for anthologies or having a work optioned for film or television. We learn of her reactions to lecturing at schools and her attempts to write other genre material. These letters really are a perfect storm of personal and professional life and they show the absolute mundanity of being a writer along with the sweetness of success.

Like many writers I know, Shirley faces procrastination ("This is not a letter, this is a way of killing half an hour.") and writers block ("I must stop writing letters and get to writing a novel. If you think of any good scenes for a novel covering about forty pages send them right along. I can use anything I get.").

What surprised me was how the letters to her agent were often quite personal and casual in manner (and sometimes showed an odd streak in her nature):

Due to circumstances presumably within my control, I find work almost impossible right now. Every morning I plug away at doing one whole page and every evening I throw it out. If I ever get together three or four un-thrown-out pages I shall send them to you. Also I can’t go outdoors because one of our strange cats has completely covered the doorstep with dead frogs.
That strange nature ... really, a dry sense of humor. I certainly never appreciated it from the works of hers I've read (I've only read two novels and a small handful of short stories), but the comment about the cat and the frogs is not totally unusual. We see it a little more in her youthful days, but it shows up once in awhile later on as well:

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas together; everybody but me drank to your health in eggnog, but eggnog is 350 calories, so I used bourbon which may have as many calories but I don’t want to know about it.
I admit I knew nothing about Shirley Jackson other than she wrote one of the most famous short stories ever ("The Lottery") and a couple of novels which, together with "The Lottery" were enough to classify her as a 'horror' writer. (I never felt that was a good classification, personally.) But this book really brought forth a woman with some personal demons, such as severe anxiety and agoraphobia, who had an incredible talent for writing and somehow managed to both write and raise a family in the 1950's.

I am excited to go back and read more of her work.

Looking for a good book? The Letters of Shirley Jackson, edited by Laurance Jackson Hyman, is better than a memoir as it captures moments as it happened, rather than an authors reflections on events. This should be required reading for budding authors as well as fans of Shirley Jackson's work. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

The Letters of Shirley Jackson is a book every Jackson fan NEEDS to have on their shelves. I have read many of Shirley Jackson's works but having this intimate view into what and how she wrote her letters feels special. This book is a hefty one but all the better to really sink your teeth into. I loved taking this book little by little like perfect sips of tea. Every time I opened the book it felt like I was returning to a friend.

For horror/thriller readers looking to read more non-fiction, this is definitely a great book to pick up! You'll learn about Shirley Jackson's whole life from her health to her wealth to her writerly friends and beyond. I laughed, I cried, and I immediately wanted to do a reread of her books while making my way through this collection. This book is well worth your time.

Shirley Jackson is one of my all time favorite authors (maybe even my number one favorite!) and it was a pleasure to read these letters!

An interesting look at the behind the scenes life of one of the most famous horror writers of the 20th century. Helps to show another side of Jackson.

What a treat for every Shirley Jackson fan, which is basically everyone. I'm not usually a letters-reader but this collection was super charming.

From the author of "The Lottery" and "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," this is a collection of the personal letters of Shirley Jackson written over the course of three decades.

I have read some of Jackson's oeuvre but didn't know enough about her life other than that she was a mom. This collection of letters opens up her life to show how witty, complicated, intelligent, she was. The letters begin with a teenage Shirley in the throws of love with her eventual husband. It's amazing to watch that Shirley become the brilliant and beloved writer and, well the adult.
I also thought it was interesting to read about a working mom, especially in the 1950s and how difficult it was for her to balance work and home life.
Her life was very fascinating and it was a tragedy that it ended so suddenly. She definitely had more to give to the world of literature.

Love being able to gain more insight into one of my favorite authors!!! Thank you for the opportunity to read it before publishing.

Shirley Jackson conjured up some of the most chilling tales in American literature. It is known she suffered from agoraphobia, had a drinking problem, her husband was a womanizer and that she died of a heart attack at the age of 48. Just prior to reading "The Letters of Shirley Jackson" I caught "Shirley", a 2020 biopic portraying a creepy woman in a "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" family drama. I was braced to deal with a lot of gloom when opening this 620 page challenge.

Nothing prepared me for the woman I found in this collection. We meet an effervescent young woman of twenty-one writing bubbly letters to her sweetheart and friends. We see her sharp humor and wit, her goofy little doodles and sketchings... who knew this woman had a sense of humor? She was a loving mother who wrote family fare for Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and McCalls. While she battled with agoraphobia at times, she also drove her own automobile and enjoyed being active in the lecture circuit. Shirley was no zombie.

As with any author, we are privy to the struggles she had while writing. About "The Haunting of Hill House" she wrote "The novel is getting sadder. It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their ways." I felt the same way about this book. There had been only the slightest clue of trouble between Shirley and her husband Stanley up until this point. The view we get from her letters is  what she is surface-sharing with her family, friends and business associates. Finally there is the bombshell letter she writes to Stanley expressing how lonely he has made her with his fooling around and his lack of respect for her, often calling her "a tedious bore".

In a letter to herself, Shirley writes over and over that she will not be intimidated by Stanley's harsh judgment of her serious work. "i will do what I am set to do and nothing else. i will not be afraid. i will not be afraid. i will do what i am set to do and nothing else. i will not be afraid. ever again. i will not be afraid. i will not be afraid. i will not." (She rarely uses any capitalization in her letters)

"The Lottery", "The Haunting of Hill House", and "We Have Always Lived in this Castle" were all delivered by an artist who can not be restricted to a genre status. It is a tragedy this wonderful woman suffered such physical and mental torment in the final years of  her short life. These letters help fill out the flesh and blood of a national treasure.

I want to thank Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #TheLettersofShirleyJackson #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishing

On November 10, 2021 I am posting this on NetGalley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookBub, KOBO, Waterstones, Twitter and Facebook

Edited by her son Laurence Jackson Hyman, this collection of Shirley Jackson's letters is a labor of love, a tribute to her creativity, wit, and biting sense of humor, a detailed portrayal of their family life, and a time capsule.

Clocking in at over 600 pages, the introduction tells us the almost three hundred included letters were culled from a selection of over five hundred. She was prolific indeed. Some of the earliest letters, her love letters to Stanley, were so raw and emotional and earnest they felt too private to read. The sheer volume and content of the early Stanley letters (on her end, the book doesn't include letters *to* Shirley) remind the reader what writing love letters was like back in the old days: a) write the letter b) mail that letter and hardest of all c) the interminable wait for a response.

There are pointy pointed cartoon drawings, mostly depicting Stanley doing nothing, or reading the paper, while Shirley heroically holds the household together. There are repeating themes (money problems, lots of cocktail parties, lots of pride in the kids, trips to New York, her cars). Shirley was the driver in the family and loved her little convertibles, it was easy to picture her driving around campus with the top down.

The letters provide a lot of context for her novels and stories. The letters around the time she was writing The Haunting of Hill House are particularly creepy. She was doing research on haunted houses, there was an active poltergeist in Long Island at the time, she was writing late into the night, sometimes alone in the house.

The letters also provide a window into what it was like for a working woman in the 50s and 60s. Shirley was constantly balancing her writing career with keeping the family running, with neither side providing much support or acknowledgement of the other. One example - children at her son's school were only allowed to bring their lunches to school (vs. going home at lunchtime) if their mothers were working. Shirley had to prove that she was a professional, working writer in order to send her son to school with lunch. Hard to imagine now but the letters illustrate the dichotomy she lived through.

There's really a lot to digest here. I was in this book for six weeks and it makes me want to revisit her work. At the risk of this review being as long as the book itself I'll end now by saying it's a great insight to a brilliant artist and would highly recommend it as a companion piece to Ruth Franklin's 2016 biography to anybody wanting to dig deeper into Shirley Jackson.

My thanks to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.

In an age of instant communication, it can be easy to forget that letter-writing is an art form. And Shirley Jackson had it nailed. Through letters to her parents, publishers, fellow authors, friends, and even fans, we get a valuable glimpse at Jackson as a person. We learn about her writing methods, her financial struggles (and eventual successes), her love of fancy cars, her unrealized dream of seeing a film adaptation of her novel, The Sundial, and many other wonderful tidbits.

Throughout the course of the book, I became very invested in Jackson’s family. To read about Jackson’s daughter Sally discovering her potential path as a writer, and to see Laurie (who edited this very book) go from wunderkind jazz artist, to photographer, to father, was truly a pleasure. Jackson’s pride in her four children was incredibly palpable. No wonder they inspired her two family memoirs, Life Among the Savages, and Raising Demons.

These letters reveal a lot about Jackson’s tumultuous relationship with her husband, Stanley. From their early courtship, to a particularly harrowing unsent letter towards the latter part of Jackson’s life, these letters suggest that Stanley, an academic, critic, and struggling writer, was perhaps resentful of Jackson’s success. Jackson undoubtedly performed the duel role of breadwinner and dominant parent, whereas Stanley mostly comes across as a philandering bully.

I found myself getting very sad towards the end of the book. As Jackson’s health deteriorates, her letters become less frequent, and lack the vibrancy and humor of her earlier missives. It is so completely unfair that the world was robbed of such an immense talent so young. And at the peak of her powers.

This book is pure gold for any Jackson obsessive. It is the closest thing to an autobiography, albeit an unconventional one. The thing that came across most is just how funny Jackson was. She is often remembered for her knack for the uncanny, but she is genuinely playful in some of these letters. And her illustrations are hilarious. What a great talent, what an absolute loss for the literary world, but what a legacy.

The Letters of Shirley Jackson
by Shirley Jackson
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date 13 Jul 2021
Biographies & Memoirs | Literary Fiction


I am reviewing a copy of The Letters of Shirley Jackson through Random House Publishing and NetGalley:




If you’re looking to get a deeper look into the life of one of the most influential writers of thee past 100 years, then I highly recommend The Letters of Shirley Jackson.





The letters in this book were written of the spam of three decades, from her college years, to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson’s writing over nearly three decades.



For those who like myself want to know, more about the lives of authors, in this case it is Shirley Jackson’s life we get to look into, I highly recommend The Letters of Shirley Jackson.




I give The Letters of Shirley Jackson five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

I love love love this book. I love it so much that after reading an advance copy on my Kindle I ran out and bought the hard copy when it was released. I've always loved Shirley Jackson's fiction but her letters are extraordinary. Not only was she incredibly funny, but the letters shine a light on her struggles with work-life balance, hate mail, marriage, writer's block, and a number of other issues so many of us deal with every day.

This was the best book I’ve read this year. This is also the best book I thought would have been published by now. I’m so happy to live in a time when there is more winsome Shirley Jackson uncovered.

Shirley Jackson wrote brilliantly, including the classics "The Haunting of Hill House", "The Lottery" and "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" which have a special place in my library. She also wrote many articles, poetry and gave lectures. After reading this book I feel I know her much better, what made her tick. Her collection of letters to Stanley, her parents, publishers and others gives readers more than just a glimpse about her life. Her line drawings are witty and charming and I love the addition of photographs, too.

Typing only on manual typewriter "ernest" with little editing and rare capitalization her style was very unique. She wanted her letters to be kept...and I am so glad they were saved and put together to create this book by her oldest son. He definitely had no shortage of material! Jackson admitted to sometimes writing just for money as she and Stanley and their children lived in lovely houses and had to pay rent. They also moved often. In fact, in many letters to her parents she requests and thanks them for their regular cheques. I wonder what she would think of her popularity now!

The daily life bits are fascinating, too, as Jackson included details on dental appointments, what she did for entertainment, grasshoppers a foot and a half long, marriage, children, storms, husband Stanley's jobs, cleaning, baking, her thoughts and dreams and letters to her publishers. Her hyperbole and wit is legendary and it was wonderful to read so much more of it! She enjoyed Henry James and P. G. Wodehouse. Excellent taste in authors.

Her sudden death so young is very sad, not only for those around her but for those who enjoy her writing decades after her death. If you enjoy epistolary writing and this author in general, you will surely be smitten with this book.

My sincere thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this insightful book.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an advanced copy of this collection of letters.

The Letters of Shirley Jackson, written by Shirley Jackson, and edited by her son Laurence Jackson Hyman showcases some of the correspondance the famous author wrote to friend, family and fans over a 30 year period, covering her courtship with her husband, up until her early passing a 30 year period. Most are collected for the first time.

Letters can give great insights into both the writer and to written. Public stands and statements might be further explained, or even denied in letters, true emotions might be shared between intimates. True love could be confessed, and a great love can be shown to have its problems.

All this is present in Ms. Jackson's letters. Many might complain why these should be published. Many more might complain on the presentation of the letters. Her son decided to keep her style of all lower case, and little punctuation or editing. So it might take some time to get into the flow of the writing. However to understand her writing, it helps to understand the writer, and that is clearer in her own words, clearer even than most biographies can be. They are sad, her numerous medical problems overshadow most of the letters, but funny. Some letters are almost short story-like.

This is a very interesting collection, for fans of Ms. Jackson, or for those interested in writing, how a writer becomes inspired, and how sometimes that inspiration can effect their life.

Thoughfully curated collection of Shirley Jackson's writings. I appreciated the extensive foreword and would recommend this book.