Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco and grew up in the comfortable suburb of Burlingame, with a mother who never quite approved of her. At Syracuse University she met Stanley Edgar Hyman, who read one of her stories in a college magazine and decided he would marry its author. He did. They settled in North Bennington, Vermont, where he taught at Bennington College, and raised four children in a big, untidy, book-filled house.

On June 26, 1948, The New Yorker published a short story of hers called “The Lottery.” In a pleasant small village, the townspeople gather on a sunny June morning for their annual lottery, chatting about tractors and taxes. Only at the very end do we learn what the winner receives: she is stoned to death by her neighbors, including her own family.

The response was unlike anything the magazine had seen. Hundreds of readers wrote in, confused, angry or frightened; some canceled their subscriptions; some wanted to know where such lotteries were held and whether they could watch. Jackson later said that of all the letters, only a handful were kind. The story has since been read by generations of schoolchildren, and its power comes from its calm: the ordinary voices, the bright weather, the box everyone has stopped seeing.

She was a master of that kind of dread. The Haunting of Hill House (1959), about four people who come to study a reputedly haunted house, is often called one of the finest ghost stories ever written; its opening paragraph is studied by writers for its rhythm. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) is narrated by Merricat Blackwood, who lives with her sister in the family house after the rest of the family was poisoned.

Jackson also wrote two very funny books about her chaotic family life, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, and juggled a household, a demanding husband and a writing career long before that was common. She suffered from anxiety in her last years, and died in her sleep in 1965, at forty-eight.