Shirley Jackson Centenary of Birth covers

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." So begins author Shirley Jackson's classic novel The Haunting of Hill House. Shirley Jackson was born on December 14, 1916, in San Francisco, and would not live to see her fiftieth birthday, dying of heart failure in her sleep at the age of 48. Over her too-short writing career, she penned novels and short stories that have become part of our collective imagination, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle and her shocking short story "The Lottery", which generated more letters from readers than any story The New Yorker had ever published.

These covers by Joshua McGee of @McGeekiest Cachets feature an oval vignette of Jackson; the dust jacket of the first edition of The Haunting of Hill House; and the text "100th Anniversary of the Birth of Author Shirley Jackson", atop an eerie background. Each bears one 2016 Jack-O'-Lantern stamp (Scott #5137-5140) and was hand-cancelled in her hometown of San Francisco, California on December 14, 2016, a century to the day after her birth.