Life Among the Savages
New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953. Very Good / Very Good. Item #49384
New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953. First Edition, stated First Printing. Octavo; pink cloth boards stamped in black; illustrated dust jacket; 241pp. Light rubbing and bumping to boards; binding sound; bookseller ticket (Rosengren's of San Antonio) to rear pastedown. Price-clipped dust jacket chipped and worn with toning to spine; about Very Good.
Critics, mostly male, were shocked and a little confused when the author of "The Lottery" released this series of short stories centered around her family -- Betty Friedan even took a shot. The stories, along with the sequel "Raising Demons," live on, however, and, as author Ruth Franklin notes, rely on many of the same techniques as Jackson's gothic fiction, "the gradual buildup of carefully chosen detail, the ironic understatement, the repetition of key phrases and the unerring instinct for just where to begin and end a story."
Ruth Franklin, "Shirley Jackson’s ‘Life Among the Savages’ and ‘Raising Demons’ Reissued." New York Times: May 8, 2015.
Price: $300.00