“The Lottery,” a short story by Shirley Jackson published in 1948, caused a sensation with its tale of a pleasant American town where, each summer, one citizen is chosen by random lottery and stoned to death. The story presents an extreme case of conventional thinking and mindless group action untethered by reason or compassion. When it published the story, The New Yorker magazine received a firestorm of criticism, hate mail, and cancelled subscriptions. Today, however, “The Lottery” is widely considered a classic of horror fiction.

Though her career was cut short at age 48, author Shirley Jackson was prolific, writing hundreds of short stories and several novels, most of them in the mystery and horror genres. Her most famous creations are the controversial short story The Lottery and the gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House); both are regarded as superlative examples of horror fiction, and both have been adapted for stage and screen.

High-strung and lonely as a girl—she wrote “i thought i was insane”—Jackson early on penned stories while putting up with her mother’s relentless criticisms about her lack of good looks and refusal to behave in a feminine manner. Jackson married her college sweetheart, Stanley Hyman, a scholar of literary criticism who encouraged her writing but was unfaithful and treated her as his inferior.