It was Hyman who typically commandeered it. Theirs was a two-writer household - Hyman was a well-known literary critic - with, for some time, one typewriter between the two. In private, she squirreled away time to write while her four children napped or entertained themselves. Stanley Edgar Hyman in collegiate North Bennington, Vt. In public, Jackson maintained the role of devoted housewife by remaining Mrs. It strongly affirms the American author’s powerful collection of stories, novels and memoirs. This biography is no critical reassessment. In “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life,” book critic and Guggenheim fellow Ruth Franklin painstakingly examines Jackson’s extensive correspondence, diaries and interviews, as well as drafts of her work. This impressive biography, which arrives just months before what would have been Jackson’s 100th birthday, should correct this oversight. But while O’Connor’s Southern Gothic literature is firmly established in the canon of 20th-century American literature, time has been less generous to Jackson, who is largely forgotten, except perhaps for her chilling short story “The Lottery.” Like her peer, fellow midcentury American writer Flannery O’Connor, Shirley Jackson refused to bow to the conventions of women’s writing.
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