The essay below is an edited version of a lecture on "The Lottery" that was originally delivered by Jackson in 1960. The lecture was later published as "Biography of a Story," in Come Along with Me in 1968. In it, Jackson talks about how she came to write "The Lottery," and the reaction the story received when it was first published in The New Yorker.

On the morning of June 28, 1948, I walked down to the post office in our little Vermont town to pick up the mail. I was quite casual about it as I recall-I opened the box, took out a couple of bills and a letter or two, talked to the postmaster for a few minutes, and left, never supposing that it was the last time for months that I was to pick up the mail without an active feeling of panic. By the next week I...