Penguin Modern Classic: Let Me Tell You

The dark, unsettling writings of Shirley Jackson have established her as one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. This new volume of uncollected and recently discovered works brings together a treasure trove of short stories – each a miniature masterwork of unease – with candid, fascinating essays, lectures, articles and drawings.

Here an everyday world of dinner parties, children’s playgrounds and bridge games is made unfamiliar and troubling. Strange encounters occur, unwanted visitors arrive, places and objects take on lives of their own. And, in pieces describing everything from her large, exasperating family to the small-town inspiration for her infamous story The Lottery, Jackson also displays a gleeful, sharp humour.

This collection is the first opportunity to see Shirley Jackson’s different ways of writing together, switching between the ordinary and the uncanny, the comic and the horrific.