The Lottery and Other Stories
The Lottery and Other Stories is a 1949 short-story collection by Shirley Jackson. Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Company, it includes The Lottery plus 24 other stories. It was the only collection Jackson published during her lifetime. After her death, three more collections appeared: Come Along with Me (1968), Just an Ordinary Day (1995), and Let Me Tell You (2015).
The collection’s original working title was The Lottery or, The Adventures of James Harris. Some stories feature a character named James Harris, and the surname Harris appears in other stories as well. It also includes a short excerpt from the ballad The Daemon Lover, in which the name James Harris appears. The book is dedicated “For my mother and father.” The sections are introduced by quotations from Saducismus Triumphatus, a 17th‑century book about witchcraft by Joseph Glanvill.
Critics praised the volume. Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas called it “a brilliant collection of naturalistic glimpses of a world with terrifying holes in it.”
In 2011, The Guardian reassessed the book. The famous story The Lottery is not necessarily typical of Jackson’s work. The threat in her stories is often subtle, hidden in ordinary life, with a focus on mothers and women starting domestic life. The collection mixes humor with horror and includes sharp observations about racism in the story “Flower Garden.” Some stories end abruptly like traps, while others come together with a sense of fate. The Lottery itself was first published in 1948.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:38 (CET).