 Cover of the 1st US edition | |
| Author | Shirley Jackson |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Tom Hallman |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short stories |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | 1996 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 388 |
| ISBN | 9780553103038 |
Just An Ordinary Day is a posthumous collection of short stories by American writer Shirley Jackson, first published in 1996 by Bantam Books. [1]
According to Jackson's children, Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt, an old box bearing no return address (apparently discovered in a Vermont barn), mysteriously appeared on Hyman's front porch at some point during the early 1990s. Inside were the original manuscript for The Haunting of Hill House , six unpublished stories, and many pages of notes. This discovery led Hyman and Dewitt to produce a new collection of their mother's work titled Just An Ordinary Day, which contains thirty-two new stories—some of which came from Jackson's unsorted papers that had been sent by her husband to the Library of Congress as well as from the San Francisco Public Library—and twenty-one which had appeared in periodicals, but had never been collected in book form. [2] [3] [4] [5]
The introduction to the collection is written by Hyman and DeWitt; there is also a preface by Jackson entitled "All I Can Remember." [6]
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2023) |
Part One: Unpublished Stories
Part Two: Uncollected Stories (with periodical of first publication)
Publishers Weekly describes Just An Ordinary Day as a "feast" "[f]or Jackson devotees, as well as first-time readers . . . a virtuoso collection," [2] while Kirkus Reviews writes: "There's rather a lot of inchoate work here . . . and many of the bland titles were obviously only preliminary. Of the unpublished stories, best are such Saki-like models of compact menace . . . as well as two of Jackson's most amusing pictures of embattled motherhood. The uncollected pieces, many of them first published in popular magazines, are nevertheless generally much stronger . . . Even at a bit below the level of her best work, it's nice to have Jackson back again." [31]
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