Writer, Housewife, and Witch
With the release of a new biography by Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Jackson's life as a writer, mother, and faculty wife in North Bennington has received further attention.
Excerpts adapted from the biography by Franklin have been published in New York Magazine as "The Novelist Disguised as a Housewife" and in LitHub as "Shirley Jackson Wasn't Actually a Witch, or Was She?" In the latter, Franklin characterizes the three-part nature of Jackson's persona as: "writer, housewife, and witch."
The New York Times reviewed the biography favorably, calling it "vidid" and "intimate." They continued: "The value of Franklin's book...is its thoroughness and the way she traces Jackson's evolution as an artist."
Further works that have been recently published on the subject include "Shirley Jackson's Disappearing Act" in the New Republic, and "Haunted Womanhood" in The Atlantic.