PENGUIN 
CLASSICS
THE SUNDIAL
SHIRLEY JACKSON was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story “The Lottery,” which was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. Her novels—which include The Sundial, The Bird’s Nest, Hangsaman, The Road Through the Wall, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Haunting of Hill House—are characterized by her use of realistic settings for tales that often involve elements of horror and the occult. Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages are her two works of nonfiction. She died in 1965.
VICTOR LAVALLE is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus; three novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, and The Devil in Silver; and an e-book–only novella, Lucretia and the Kroons. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Whiting Writers’ Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens. He teaches at Columbia University.
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First published in the United States of America by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy 1958
Published in Penguin Books 1986
This edition with a foreword by Victor LaValle published 2014
Copyright © 1958 by Shirley Jackson
Foreword copyright © 2014 by Victor LaValle
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Jackson, Shirley, 1916–1965.
The sundial / Shirley Jackson ; foreword by Victor LaValle.
pages ; cm. —(Penguin classics)
ISBN 978-0-14-310706-4
ISBN 978-0-698-14820-8 (eBook)
I.
Title.
PS3519. A392S9 2014
813'. 54—dc23
2013034518
Version_1
Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
For Bernice Baumgarten
Foreword
In 2007 my girlfriend and I went to see the latest Coen brothers’ film, No Country for Old Men, at a movie theater near Union Square in New York. The place was jammed, but we got decent seats. We’d been dating for a year by that time. Emily and I knew each other pretty well, but it had still been only a year, and it occurred to me, and I’m sure to her, that you could spend that long dating someone and still not know her, understand her, on some essential level. You’re enjoying your days together but also waiting for that moment when you see a flash of the soul, the person’s true essence, so you can decide if this relationship is truly serious. I wasn’t thinking about this stuff consciously as the lights dimmed and the movie started, but it was there in the atmosphere of our relationship. Time to get serious or get gone. Then the predawn imagery of Texas—rough, lovely open country—appeared on the screen. Tommy Lee Jones spoke in a voice-over as the images played on. (“I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. ”) The audience, Emily and I included, grew quiet.
CLASSICS
