Happy birthday, Guy de Maupassant

It is the birthday of French writer Guy de Maupassant (1850), who is credited with helping to develop the literary form of the short story. He wrote more than 300 short stories as well as a poetry collection, three travel books, and six novels. Perhaps his most famous short story was Dumpling (1880), a story set during the Franco-Prussian War. It tells of a group of travelers on their way to La Havre by stagecoach. The story is included in de Maupassant’s collection Dumpling and Other Stories of the War. John Ford’s film Stagecoach (1939) was heavily influenced by de Maupassant’s story.

Fisher wrote during Harlem Renaissance

It is the birthday of writer Rudolph Fisher (1897), who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance as a novelist and short-story writer. He is best remembered for his novel The Walls of Jericho (1928), which realistically depicted black urban life, and for writing the first detective novel with all black characters, The Conjure-Man Dies (1932), which includes a mysterious murder, hidden identities, and exotic African rituals. He was considered the most gifted short-story writer of the Harlem Renaissance, writing of Southern blacks adjusting to urban life in Harlem. Among his short stories are City of Refuge, High Yaller, The South Lingers On, Blades of Steel, and Miss Cynthie.

Happy birthday, Louis L'Amour

It is the birthday of writer Louis L'Amour (1908), whose tales of the American West have thrilled readers for generations. Scholars consider him one of the world's most popular writers. Though he was best known for his 89 novels and numerous short story collections, L'Amour also wrote two non-fiction works, Frontier (1984) and Education of a Wondering Man (1989), published after his death.

Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson

It is the birthday of writer Shirley Jackson, who wrote The Haunting of Hill House (1959), which was adapted as the film The Haunting (1963). She is known for writing in the mystery and horror genres.  Her best known short story, The Lottery, appeared in The New Yorker in 1948 and generated hundreds of letters from bewildered readers. It was banned in South Africa, a development that evidently pleased Jackson.  It is one of the most famous short stories in American literature.

The story concerns an annual tradition in a small town in Vermont. Villagers gather each year on June 27 to participate in a ritual they believe will ensure a good harvest. Youngsters gather stones as the head of each family draws a slip of paper from a black box. One man draws the slip with a black spot on it. His family has been chosen. In the next round of the lottery, his family members draw slips. The man's wife gets the one with the spot. In the last scene, villagers surround her and stone her to death.

Readers of The New Yorker were outraged. Many sent hate mail to Jackson and some even canceled their subscriptions to the magazine. About a month after the story was published, Jackson sought to respond to the criticism in the San Francisco Chronicle. She said it was difficult to say what she hoped the story would say. "I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."

Jackson later wrote that of the more than 300 letters she received, only 13 of them, mostly from friends, spoke kindly to her. Some, she said, she was scared to open. Her mother even chastised her, suggesting that such a gloomy kind of story seemed to be all "you young people think about these days."

The Lottery was adapted for radio, television, theater, and film. Jackson wrote close to 100 short stories, five other novels and several children's books. She is said to have inspired Stephen King, English author Neil Gaiman, British screenwriter Nigel Kneale, and screenwriter Richard Matheson, whose credits include What Dreams May Come, I Am Legend, and a short story, Duel, with he adapted into a screenplay for a TV movie that was directed by  Stephen Spielberg.