By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Got a Letter from Jimmy’ is a short story by the American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65). The story, which runs to just a few pages, involves just two characters: an unnamed husband and wife. The husband has received a letter from an associate simply identified as Jimmy; the wife seeks to know what the contents of the letter are, but the husband hasn’t opened it.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Villager’ is a short story by the American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65). The story explores themes of identity, longing, and the human desire to escape reality. In the story, a woman who moved to New York with dreams of becoming a professional dancer visits an apartment to buy some furniture, and ends up briefly assuming the identity of another woman.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Charles’ is a short story by the American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65), first published in the women’s magazine Mademoiselle in 1948 and included in her 1949 collection, The Lottery and Other Stories. The story is about a young boy who, upon starting kindergarten, picks up bad habits which he attributes to the presence of Charles, a boy in his class.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Lottery’ is a famous 1948 short story of the American writer Shirley Jackson. The story focuses on a village where an annual lottery is drawn, with the fate of the person who draws the ‘winning’ slip only revealed at the end of the story. Jackson’s story is about a dark side to human behaviour which had become fully exposed during the horrors of the 1940s, especially in Europe.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Lottery’ by the American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65) was first published on 26 June 1948 in the New Yorker magazine. The story was initially met with anger and even a fair amount of hate mail from readers, with many cancelling their subscriptions to the magazine. What was it within this dark and terrifying story which not only unnerved so many readers, but actively seemed to repulse them?