The Sundial was published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1958 and occupies an unusual position in Shirley Jackson’s body of work. It is neither the domestic comedy of Life Among the Savages nor the pure psychological horror of The Haunting of Hill House (which would follow the next year). Instead, it is something stranger: an apocalyptic satire in which a group of awful people barricade themselves inside a grand estate, convinced that the world is about to end and that only they will be spared.
The Novel
The Halloran house is enormous, ugly, and surrounded by formal gardens centered on a sundial inscribed “WHAT IS THIS WORLD?” The Halloran family — matriarch Orianna, her dimwitted son Fancy, assorted in-laws, hangers-on, and servants — have gathered following the death of the family patriarch under suspicious circumstances. Orianna almost certainly killed him by pushing him down the stairs, but this barely registers against the larger crisis: Aunt Fanny has received a vision in the garden. The world will end. Only those inside the Halloran house will survive.
What follows is Jackson’s blackest comedy. The household prepares for the apocalypse with the same self-important fussiness with which they might prepare for a dinner party. They stockpile supplies, argue about who deserves to be saved, jockey for position in the post-apocalyptic hierarchy, and generally reveal themselves as precisely the sort of people who should not be entrusted with rebuilding civilization.
Jackson’s satirical targets are multiple: the American aristocracy’s sense of entitlement, the apocalyptic imagination (whether religious or secular), the human tendency to reshape catastrophe into a narrative in which one’s own survival is both guaranteed and deserved.
Apocalypse as Satire
The genius of The Sundial is its ambiguity about whether the apocalypse is real. Aunt Fanny’s vision may be genuine prophecy or may be delusion. The signs she interprets — changes in weather, animal behavior, the sundial’s shadow — could be meaningful or meaningless. Jackson never resolves the question, because resolution is beside the point.
What matters is how the prospect of apocalypse reveals character. The Hallorans respond to the end of the world exactly as they respond to everything else: with selfishness, snobbery, and an unshakeable conviction of their own importance. The apocalypse simply makes visible what was always true about them.
This structural principle — using an extreme situation to reveal ordinary human failings — connects The Sundial to Jackson’s other work. Hill House reveals its inhabitants’ psychological weaknesses; “The Lottery” reveals a community’s capacity for violence. In each case, the genre elements (horror, apocalypse, ritual) serve as a lens that magnifies what is already present.
The House
As in The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the house itself is a character. The Halloran house is described in terms that emphasize its pretension and artificiality — it was built to impress rather than to shelter, and its grandeur has always been slightly ridiculous. The formal gardens, the sundial, the imposing facade all speak to a family that has confused wealth with significance.
Jackson’s houses are never neutral containers. They shape and constrain the people who live in them. The Halloran house, with its locked rooms, secret passages, and oppressive grandeur, produces the specific form of madness that the novel documents.
Publication and Reception
The first edition was published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, in 1958. First printings are identified by:
- Farrar, Straus and Cudahy imprint on title page
- First edition/printing statement on copyright page
- Cloth binding with dust jacket
Contemporary reviews were mixed. Critics struggled to categorize the novel — it was too funny to be horror, too dark to be comedy, too literary to be science fiction. Some reviewers found it “minor Jackson,” a judgment that has been substantially revised in recent decades.
Critical Reassessment
The Sundial is now regarded as one of Jackson’s most original works — the novel that most clearly reveals her satirical intelligence and her willingness to work in modes that resist easy categorization. Ruth Franklin’s biography positions it as a key transitional text between the social satire of Jackson’s early novels and the pure horror of Hill House.
The novel’s apocalyptic concerns — and its suggestion that humanity’s response to existential crisis will be petty, self-serving, and absurd — resonate strongly in an era of climate anxiety and pandemic preparedness.
Collecting The Sundial
First edition (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958): Fine copies in dust jacket bring $300–$800. The novel was printed in modest numbers and the dust jacket — which features a distinctive design — is prone to wear and fading.
Signed copies are very rare. Jackson died in 1965. Authenticated signed copies of any Jackson novel command premium prices — $1,500–$4,000 for The Sundial.
The title has appreciated significantly since the Jackson revival of the 2010s. It remains below Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle in market value but is increasingly recognized as an essential Jackson title and a precursor to the satirical apocalyptic fiction that has flourished in the twenty-first century.