Shirley Jackson's chilling second novel, based on her own experiences and an actual mysterious disappearance

Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite longs to escape home for college. Her father is a domineering and egotistical writer who keeps a tight rein on Natalie and her long-suffering mother. When Natalie finally does get away, however, college life doesn’t bring the happiness she expected. Little by little, Natalie is no longer certain of anything—even where reality ends and her dark imaginings begin. Chilling and suspenseful, Hangsaman is loosely based on the real-life disappearance of a Bennington College sophomore in 1946.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson with a collection of her finest, creepiest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best. This selection includes 'The Lottery', Jackson's masterpiece and one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century.

Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson with a collection of her finest, creepiest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best. This selection includes 'The Lottery', Jackson's masterpiece and one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century.

Standard print ed. originally published: New York : Viking, 1959.

Originally published, New York, Viking Press, 1962.

آنچه بر دوش می‌کشیدند ضیافتی از داستان‌های کوتاه را ترتیب داده است. هر ‫داستان، کلاسیک یا مدرن، طعم و بوی خاص خود را دارد و مخاطب را در فضایی میان گذشته و حال شناور می‌سازد. دست‌چینی از آثار کوتاه و اندیشه‌ساز نویسندگان انگلیسی زبان، چه آن‌ها که از نژاد آنگلوساکسون بودند و در انگلستان یا ایرلند به دنیا آمدند و چه آن‌ها که در قارهٔ نو‌، پا به عرصهٔ وجود گذاشتند، پیش روی شیفتگان داستان قرار گرفته است. شخصیت‌هایی متفاوت خلق می‌شوند و برخی‌شان خواننده را در جهانی از چلش‌ها، انگیزه‌ها، کنش‌ها و تأمّلات درونی و فلسفی خویش، درگیر می‌سازند. هر شخصیت، از کودک آرمان‌خواه فاتح اسپانیایی و پدربزرگش گرفته تا ستوانی دل‌باخته به نام جیمی کراس، در آنچه بر دوش می‌کشیدند، که دل در گرو عشق مارتا دارد، جلوه‌ای آشنا از طبیعت بشر و ایده‌آل‌هایش را باز می‌آفریند و این‌گونه، احساس هم‌ذات پنداری مخاطب را برمی‌انگیزد. ولی علیرغم تفاوت‌هایی بی‌شمار که در جهان‌بینی شخصیت‌ها و نحوهٔ نگرش آن‌ها به آدم‌های پیرامونشان به چشم می‌خورد، تمامشان از وجهی مشترک برخوردارند و آن، بار تحمّل‌ناپذیر تنها بودن است که هریک به شکلی، بر دوش می‌کشند.


The present book is a selection of short and thought-provoking short stories by English-speaking authors. Each story, classic or modern, has its own taste and smell and makes the audience float between the past and the present. The theme is presented to the reader from the dark atmosphere of the stories and the pessimistic look that is housed in the lower layers, and flips over to the raw fantasy of the simple-minded who strongly believe that life is a sweet and pleasant phenomenon. In the story of "Hand", we read: A man finds an artificial hand that has fallen on the floor of the street and takes it home with him, washes it, and constantly thinks about what the owner of this hand looks like. She goes to the market to find men without hands

The first short story collection by Shirley Jackson, featuring one of her most celebrated works.

The only collection of Jackson's short fiction to be published in her lifetime, it contains 25 stories, of which "The Lottery" is the most famous. When it was published in The New Yorker, it elicited an unprecedented stream of interest, both positive and negative, from its readers. It is a haunting take of the darker side of small town America, and one of Jackson's crowning achievements.
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Since its original publication in 1966, this volume has attained classic status. Now its contents have been updated and its cultural framework enlarged by the orginal editors. Many of the 44 stories come from a new writing generation with a contemporary consciousness, and this brilliant blending of masters of the past and the brightest talents of the present achieves the goal of making a great collection even greater.

Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers - and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

"The Lottery", one of the most terrifying stories written in the twentieth century, created a sensation when it was published in 1948. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual stories.

There's something nasty in suburbia. In these deliciously dark tales, the daily commute turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, the loving wife hides homicidal thoughts and the concerned citizen might just be an infamous serial killer. In the haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems and nowhere is safe, from the city streets to the country manor, and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods...

In a small American town, the local residents are abuzz with excitement and nervousness when they wake on the morning of the twenty-seventh of June. Everything has been prepared for the town’s annual tradition—a lottery in which every family must participate, and no one wants to win.

“The Lottery” stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery” has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.

The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable, writes A. M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness.
In this volume Joyce Carol Oates, our leading practitioner of the contemporary Gothic, presents the essential works of Shirley Jackson, the novels and stories that, from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, wittily remade the genre of psychological horror for an alienated, postwar America. She opens with The Lottery (1949), Jackson's only collection of short fiction, whose disquieting title story-one of the most widely anthologized tales of the 20th century-has entered American folklore. Also among these early works are "The Daemon Lover," a story Oates praises as "deeper, more mysterious, and more disturbing than 'The Lottery,' " and "Charles," the hilarious sketch that launched Jackson's secondary career as a domestic humorist. Here too are Jackson's masterly short novels: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. Rounding out the volume are 21 other stories and sketches that showcase Jackson in all her many modes, and the essay "Biography of a Story," Jackson's acidly funny account of the public reception of "The Lottery," which provoked more mail from readers of The New Yorker than any contribution before or since.

It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.