Don't shake my tree

Shirley Jackson responds to a disappointed reader

Born in 1916 in San Francisco, California, Shirley Jackson was the gifted author of six novels and hundreds of short stories, including one of her most famous works, The Lottery. A fictional tale of an annual ritual that takes place in an American town, it was this chilling story, first published in The New Yorker in 1948, that generated more hate mail …