Shirley Jackson was hanging out in North Bennington, Vermont, pushing a stroller up a hill with a bag of groceries, when the idea hit her. It wasn't some long-gestating project that took months of outlining or deep research into ancient sacrificial rituals. It was a random June morning in 1948. She got home, put the baby in the playpen, set the milk on the counter, and just started typing.
By the time her husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, came home for lunch, the draft was basically done. That’s the wild part about when was The Lottery written—the entire thing was sparked, drafted, and polished in a single afternoon. She made a few tiny tweaks the next day, sent it off to her agent, and by June 26, 1948, The New Yorker published what would become the most controversial short story in its entire history.
People didn’t just dislike it. They were furious. They cancelled subscriptions. They sent hate mail. Hundreds of letters poured into the magazine's offices, ranging from "What does this mean?" to "You people are sick." Jackson later joked that of the three hundred odd letters she received that summer, only thirteen were kind. The rest? Mostly people asking where they could go watch a real lottery.
The Post-War Vibe of 1948
Context matters. You can't talk about when was The Lottery written without looking at the world in 1948. World War II had just ended three years prior. The Nuremberg Trials were fresh in everyone's minds. The world was trying to wrap its head around how "civilized" people—ordinary neighbors, shopkeepers, and mothers—could participate in systematic, state-sponsored murder.
Jackson captured that exact anxiety.
She didn't set the story in a dark, Gothic castle or a dystopian future. She set it in a sunny, idyllic American village that looked exactly like the one she lived in. That was the gut punch. Readers in 1948 were looking for comfort and a return to "normalcy," and Jackson handed them a mirror that showed the potential for mindless cruelty hidden right behind the white picket fences.
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The New Yorker's Big Risk
When the editors at The New Yorker, specifically fiction editor William Maxwell, first read the manuscript, they knew they had something weird on their hands. But even they weren't prepared for the backlash. The magazine was usually a place for sophisticated humor, urban sketches, and high-brow poetry. Suddenly, they were publishing a story where a woman is stoned to death by her friends because the calendar said it was time.
The story was published in the June 26 issue. Interestingly, the date in the story itself is June 27. Jackson wanted the reader to feel like the events were happening right now. If you picked up the magazine on a Saturday, the stoning in the story was happening the next morning.
Why the Timing of "The Lottery" Fired People Up
Honestly, it’s kinda funny looking back at how offended people were. But back then, the social contract felt fragile. Jackson wasn't just writing a horror story; she was making a point about tradition.
We often think of 1940s America as this polite, unified era. Jackson saw the cracks. She saw the antisemitism and xenophobia in her own small Vermont town. She saw how people clung to "the way things have always been done" even when those things were objectively harmful.
When you ask when was The Lottery written, you have to realize it was written at the dawn of the Cold War. Suspicion was the new currency. The idea that your neighbor might turn on you wasn't just fiction; it was becoming a political reality with the rise of McCarthyism. Jackson just swapped out the "Red Scare" for a box of black stones.
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A Quick Drafting Process
- June 1948: Idea conceived while grocery shopping.
- Same day: First draft completed in a few hours.
- Late June 1948: Published in The New Yorker.
- The Aftermath: Magazine receives more mail for this story than any other piece of fiction ever.
She didn't labor over it. It poured out. Usually, when a writer produces something that quickly, it’s because they’ve been subconsciously processing the themes for years. Jackson had spent her life feeling like an outsider in small-town environments. She was the "eccentric" faculty wife who wrote about demons and ghosts while doing the laundry. The story was the pressure valve finally blowing.
Myths About the Story's Origin
There's this common misconception that Jackson based it on a specific historical event or an actual ancient ritual. Nope. She made it up.
Some people try to link it to her interest in witchcraft or the occult. While she did have a massive library on those subjects, "The Lottery" is much more grounded in sociology than magic. It’s about the "banality of evil"—a term Hannah Arendt would later use to describe Nazi bureaucrats. Jackson was just ahead of the curve.
Another myth is that the story was banned immediately. Actually, it wasn't "banned" in the legal sense, but it was pulled from many school curriculums and libraries for decades. Even today, it remains one of the most frequently challenged stories in American classrooms. People still find it deeply "upsetting," which is exactly what Jackson wanted. She once said she hoped that by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in a contemporary setting, she would "shock the readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."
The Legacy of a Single Afternoon
It’s rare that a single short story defines a writer's entire career, but for Jackson, this was it. She wrote incredible novels like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but "The Lottery" is the one that gets under everyone's skin.
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It has been adapted for radio, television, film, and even a ballet (which, honestly, must have been a bit grim). It’s the blueprint for the modern "deadly game" genre. You don't get The Hunger Games or Squid Game without Shirley Jackson sitting down at her typewriter in June 1948.
The sheer speed of its creation—that "when" factor—is a testament to how visceral the idea was. It didn't need a lot of fluff. It just needed the simple, terrifying logic of "it’s not fair," which are the final words of Tessie Hutchinson before the stones start flying.
How to Approach the Story Today
If you're reading it for the first time or revisiting it, don't look for a "twist" ending in the modern cinematic sense. Look for the casualness. Notice how the boys are collecting stones early on, just like they’re playing a game. Notice how Mrs. Delacroix picks up a stone so large she needs two hands.
The horror isn't that a lottery exists. The horror is that everyone—even the victim's family—goes along with it because they can't imagine stopping.
Practical Takeaways from the History of The Lottery
Understanding the timeline of this story gives us some pretty heavy stuff to chew on regarding creativity and social criticism.
- Trust the Flash of Inspiration: Jackson didn't overthink it. If an idea feels urgent and "right," run with it. The most powerful work often comes from a raw, unfiltered place.
- Context is King: To truly get the story, read up on the social climate of 1948. It transforms the piece from a "scary story" into a biting political critique.
- Expect Resistance: If you’re challenging the status quo, don't expect a standing ovation. Jackson’s hate mail is now a badge of honor in literary history.
- Look for the Mundane: Horror is most effective when it’s tucked inside the ordinary. The groceries, the sun, the small talk—those are the things that make the ending unbearable.
If you want to dive deeper into Shirley Jackson's world, look for Ruth Franklin's biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. It’s easily the best resource for understanding the woman behind the stones and the specific day in June when she decided to ruin everyone's summer. For a primary source experience, check the New Yorker archives for the original 1948 layout; seeing it surrounded by mid-century advertisements for perfume and luxury cars makes the story even more jarring.