She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years.' Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of 'personal, even neurotic, fantasies', but that Jackson intended, as 'a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb', to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that 'she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson's story 'The Lottery' was published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that 'no New Yorker story had ever received.' Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, 'bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse.'

She is best known for her dystopian short story, 'The Lottery' (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown America. She has influenced such writers as Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. Shirley Jackson was an influential American author.

The lottery by shirley jackson