American Horror: The Haunting of Hill House

Who's afraid of American horror? Sophie and Jonty, for starters. To celebrate halloween, SLOB is taking a deep dive into three classics of the American Horror genre. We've chosen novels published after 1945, and we're asking how the war - and its many aftershocks and resonances in American domestic and political life - transformed horror as a literary genre. We won't spoil the surprises by telling you all the titles ahead of time. But be warned: read and listen at your own peril.

We’ll be looking at these books in chronological order. The first is Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, published in 1959 and is now considered one of the most influential horror novels of all time. It is beautifully written, incredibly funny and genuinely scary. It's imbued with a spirit of cynicism and evil. As a result it disorientated many readers who knew Jackson not as a horror writer, but for her charming memoirs about life as a housewife in 1950s suburbia.

Join us as we enter the locked gates of Hill House and explore how this gripping, poignant, strange — and above all, scary — ghost story took shape and how Shirley Jackson came to be regarded as one of the greatest mid-century American writers.

Further Reading and listening:

Shirley Jackson, "Life Among the Savages" (1953)

Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959)

Shirley Jackson, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (1962)

Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, 2016

On the Road with Penguin Classics Halloween episode with Ruth Franklin: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-haunting-of-hill-house-with-ruth/id1549179379?i=1000633191567

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