Soon after, in 1945, Hyman got a job teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. Together, they published a short-lived literary magazine called The Spectre.Īfter graduating from Syracuse, the two got married and moved to New York City, where Jackson gave birth to the first of her four children. At age 20, she enrolled at Syracuse University, where she met her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman.

Her second stab at school was more successful. Shy and high-strung, she dropped out of the University of Rochester in 1935. Shirley Jackson was not the kind of person you'd expect to be a literary firebrand. Jackson's story was a cutting commentary on the dangers of blind obedience to tradition, and she threw it, like a grenade, into a complacent post-war society. They craved comfort, normalcy, and old-fashioned values. Following World War II, the general public wanted to leave behind the horrors of war and genocide. 'The Lottery' was published at a time when America was scrambling for conformity. And while many claimed they didn't understand the story, the intense reaction indicated they understood it all too well. Soon after the piece was published, angry letters poured in to The New Yorker. But what starts out bathed in warmth and charm grows eerier and eerier, until the horrific purpose of the lottery is revealed in the story's final paragraphs. The simply told tale covers a ritual lottery in a sunny, rural town. In 1948, The New Yorker published the most controversial short story in its history: 'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson, a 31-year-old wife and mother living in Vermont. Here's how Shirley Jackson outraged a nation with fewer than 3,500 words. A classic in modern literature, 'The Lottery' did more in nine pages than most novels do in nine chapters.

The lottery novel