Is Shirley Jackson the most underrated writer of the 20th century?

Shirley Jackson, who was born 100 years ago this month and died in her sleep one summer afternoon at the age of 48, has often been called the most underrated writer of the 20th century.

She's not so underrated anymore. Among her fans are Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and Donna Tartt; her work is being reissued by Penguin Classics; and a major biography by Ruth Franklin, A Rather Haunted Life, has just been published.

And Jackson wasn't entirely overlooked in her time, either. Dylan Thomas admired The Lottery, her most infamous tale. Dorothy Parker rated her, Sylvia Plath envied her. The New Yorker published dozens of her short stories. Her humorous housewife memoirs were bestsellers, and so was her strange last novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Her ghost novella, The Haunting of Hill House, sold well enough to pay off the mortgage, and the film rights went to the man who would go on to direct West Side Story and The Sound of Music. She was, at any rate, too successful to suit her husband, a serious critic - of Jackson as well as literature.