Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1919. She grew up in California until 1933, when her family moved to Rochester, New York. In 1934 Jackson enrolled at the University of Rochester. She soon left college and spent a year at home, where she wrote one thousand words a day. Jackson maintained such disciplined work habits for the rest of her writing career. From 1937 to 1940 she attended Syracuse University and published short fiction as well as several essays on racial prejudice and anti-Semitism. In 1940 Jackson married Stanley Edgar Hyman, an editor and literary critic. The couple raised four children in North Bennington, Vermont. Except for a twoyear interlude during which the family lived in Connecticut, Jackson spent the last twenty years of her life in North Bennington, the setting for "The Lottery."
History of the lottery. The practice of the lottery dates back to ancient times. According to one Babylonian tale, the lottery was such a highly regarded means of decision-making that eventually most civic matters-social duties, disputes, division of property, and money awards-were resolved by lot.
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