Shirley Jackson "The Haunting of Hill House" Signed First Edition, Second Printing w/COA

“Shirley Jackson’s Hill House is as nearly perfect a haunted-house tale as I have ever read. [One of] the only great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.” —Stephen King

Personally inscribed by Shirley Jackson directly into the book!

How rare her signature is, on this all time very original, classic that continues to inspire writers such as King.

New York 1959. The Viking Press. Shirley Jackson "The Haunting of Hill House". Signed by the author with a personal inscription. First Edition, Second Printing as stated on the dust-jacket. Octavo, original cloth with original un-clipped dust jacket still showing the $3.95 price. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

Personally inscribed by Shirley Jackson directly onto the FFEP (First Free End Paper):

"With all best wishes and much gratitude, Shirley Jackson"

First edition of Shirley Jackson’s most famous and influential novel, “the great modern novel of supernatural horror” (Horror: 100 Best 60).

“The Haunting of Hill House" has been called by no less an authority than Stephen King one of the greatest horror novels of all time. King, in fact, dedicated one of his books, Firestarter, "to Shirley Jackson, who never had to raise her voice."

Hill House is eerie, subtle, infinitely chilling. "I have always loved to use fear," she said-and she rarely used it better… The book, brought out in fall 1959, met with almost unmitigated praise. "A goose pimple horror story, and a good one," said the New York Herald Tribune. "Miss Jackson can summon up stark terror, make your blood chill and your scalp prickle," approved The New York Times, calling her ‘the finest master currently practicing in the genre of the cryptic, haunted tale” (Oppenheimer, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson, 226-7).

“A provocative and unsettling story in which Jackson achieves a perfect blurring of the boundary between supernatural intrusion and psychological projection. Tense, complex and brilliant in its depiction of the alienating power of loneliness and isolation… Filmed intelligently by Robert Wise in 1962” (Barron, Fantasy and Horror 6-181). Fantasy: 100 Best 79.

The Haunting of Hill House

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

— The opening paragraph from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Since its original publication in 1959, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson has become the quintessential benchmark in American gothic horror. This classic novel has not only engrossed and enthralled millions of readers, but continues to serve as a source of inspiration for countless authors who hope to live up to even a fraction of its prose.

“I think there are few, if any descriptive passages in the English language any finer than this,” Stephen King once wrote, referring to the opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House. “It is the sort of quiet epiphany every writer hopes for: Words that somehow transcend the sum of the parts. Shirley Jackson’s Hill House is as nearly perfect a haunted-house tale as I have ever read. One of the only great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.”

Hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror, The Haunting of Hill House chronicles the story of four strangers who agree to stay at the notoriously unfriendly Hill House: Dr. Montague, a scholar of the supernatural and the occult; Theodora, a flamboyant artist; Eleanor, a fragile recluse who claims past experience with poltergeists; and Luke, the young heir to the 80-year old mansion. Inexplicable events occur as the guests struggle to disguise their mounting fears that Hill House too is more than the sum of its parts; more than mere brick, wood, and stone. As the hours turn to days, Hill House seems to be a kind of live, breathing organism. Having disturbed the house’s long hibernation of isolation, the guests begin to dread the inevitable – that Hill House will take one of them as its own.

About the author

Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer, known for outstanding literary achievement in her works of gothic horror and mystery. In a career which spanned over two decades, Jackson composed six novels, two memoirs, and over 200 short stories. After publishing her debut novel in 1948, a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood, The Road Through the Wall, Jackson would garner public acclaim upon publication of her short story “The Lottery,” which details a secret, sinister underside to a bucolic American village.

She would continue to publish numerous short stories in literary journals and magazines throughout the 1950s, some of which were assembled and reissued in her 1953 memoir, Life Among the Savages. In 1959, Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House was published, widely considered to be one of the greatest ghost stories ever written. Jackson has been cited as an influence on a diverse set of authors, including Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Sarah Water, Nigel Kneale, Joanne Harris, and Richard Matheson.