Pillar of Salt

Shirley Jackson


American Patchwork edited by Betty Keene Taska

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) was born in San Francisco and there married literary critic, Stanley E. Hyman. Together they moved to a small town in Vermont and raised their family of four children.
She wrote in a wide range of genres including essays, short stories, fictionalized autobiographies, as well as novels and humorous works, such as Life Among the Savages, and Raising Demons which amusingly describe the mischief her four children got into while growing up under her watchful eye.

Ms. Jackson is best known, however, as a writer of gothic tales such as The Haunting of Hill House (1959), and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Other stories of modern-day horror, such as "The Lottery" and the urban terror and paranoia of "Pillar of Salt" won Jackson much critical acclaim and are regularly included in anthologies of contemporary American short stories.

 

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