Shirley Jackson: A Discovery

We live in the past and often are comfortable there. It isn’t that life was never easy. It was, sometimes. The fifties have become the Fifties. Certainly, the voices of women, minorities and the poor, were marginalized. Shirley Jackson was widely published, yet insufficiently understood, not taken seriously. Her stories were unique, dark responses to the oppressive conformity of postwar American life, particularly for women.

Does anyone want to be reminded of it? Are the trad wives hearing what Shirley Jackson had to say? Ms. Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, still frightens us today.

If someone is lucky enough to acquire her letters and working manuscripts, know you’ll be a caretaker, not an owner.

Take a good look.

Christie’s in New York is currently offering an incredible trove of original letters and working manuscripts by the great writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965). If you have not read her novels or memoirs, you should, but you have almost certainly already read her short story, “The Lottery”. When this fable of small-town horror was first published in The New Yorker in 1948 it caused a national sensation. It remains one of the most popularly anthologized American stories of all time and a major motion picture is currently under production.

The papers at Christie’s now, about 1600 pages in total, belong to Shirley Jackson’s eldest son, Laurence Jackson Hyman (affectionately known as Laurie in Shirley’s writing). After Shirley’s early death, her widower, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, placed those of her papers which were in their home at the Library of Congress. It was about a dozen years later (and also after Stanley’s death in 1970) that Laurence received a surprise package from his maternal grandparents. Opening the box, he saw a huge stack of his mother’s characteristic all-lower-case typed pages on her favored yellow paper—and her hand-writing, including some early poems written when she was about 12 years old.

“Laurence told me that he didn’t even know this body of his mother’s writing existed until after he moved to California in the early 1970s and his grandparents handed him this box,” says Christina Geiger of Christie’s, “There are few experiences in my life that will equal sitting at Laurence’s dining room table in Marin County, opening the very same box myself and starting to read. I don’t think I looked up until about three hours later—her writing is so very gripping.”

Indeed, Jackson’s reputation as a 20^th century master of the gothic and one of the all-time great female writers of horror has been re-ascendant. She is now recognized as an artist whose work is “nothing less than the secret history of American women of her era” (Ruth Franklin).

Laurence Jackson Hyman himself has been important in safeguarding his mother’s legacy. One example of this is The Letters of Shirley Jackson, edited by him and published in 2022 to rave reviews. A good portion of the letters in that work are present in the original in this archive, but the majority (about 300 of the total 500) have never been published. The primary recipients of the letters are Shirley Jackson’s parents (with whom she had a famously fraught relationship) and her two agents, also both women (which provide keen insights into 1950s-60s literary business in New York).

“The letters here are fantastic: fast-paced, witty, intimate, and with flashes of the uncanny,” says Christina, “but the heart of this discovery for me is the working manuscripts for We Have Always Lived in the Castle. These are the only known surviving drafts of what is generally acknowledged as her masterpiece.” There are four substantially complete, annotated typescripts plus dozens of pages of additional notes and outlines, full of revealing edits and ideas for her characters and plot points.

Shirley Jackson’s papers are currently being offered for private sale at Christie’s rather than by auction. Private sales have become an increasingly important part of Christie’s business, including archive sales such as this one in the Books & Manuscripts Department.

Read more about them and see more pictures here: The Papers of Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)

Or ask Christie’s about them: 212-636-2667, cgeiger@christies.com