Today in literary history: June 26

Here's what happened on June 26 in literary history.

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Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker.

Jackson was in a bit of a publishing drought, at least when it came to The New Yorker, when she submitted "The Lottery." 

But unlike Tessie Hutchinson, Jackson had very good luck with "The Lottery."

She later described having come up with the idea while grocery shopping in the morning and finishing it by the time her son came home from kindergarten for lunch.

While Jackson's claim that it was barely edited is a bit exaggerated, its acceptance into The New Yorker was almost unanimous, and one staffer later called it among the best few stories the magazine ever published.

And it certainly got a reaction.

The New Yorker had never before — and would never again — receive such a high volume of mail in response to one piece.

The letters, mostly negative, and subscription cancellations came in immediately; Jackson had to upgrade to the biggest PO box that summer, and her local postmaster wouldn't speak to her.

Of the 300-something letters that Jackson ultimately saw, only thirteen spoke kindly to her; even her parents expressed their dislike of the story. All of this mail has survived and is in her papers at the Library of Congress.

Some of those letters (and calls, though the number and exact contents of those are lost to time) came from readers who believed the story to be nonfiction. Worse yet, a few people asked where they could watch these lotteries.

If you're not among the many students who read "The Lottery" in school — or are looking to revisit it in a different way — you can actually listen to Jackson read it, in one of the only two known performances of her works that she did.

Sources: Mental Floss, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub

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The first Harry Potter book was published in the United Kingdom on June 26, 1997.

There, the book was titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; when it came out in the US, publisher Scholastic — which spent more money than it ever had before in acquiring a children’s book — changed the title to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Under any name, the novel was a smash hit, almost immediately ... and also a surprise one. 

A dozen publishers rejected J.K. Rowling's manuscript, but even before that, Rowling's agent had to be talked into picking it up by his office manager.

The first hardback print run of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone had only 500 copies, and over half of those went to libraries. But within two years, 300,000 copies of it had been sold in the United Kingdom.

Today, the complete Harry Potter series has been translated into eighty-seven languages, and it’s the best-selling series of all time, surpassing the 500 million-copy sale mark by the time the series turned twenty-five.

Two other name changes to note:

• Rowling almost named her orphaned boy wizard Harry Batt.

• Rowling doesn't actually have a middle name; she chose the initials J.K. Rowling to honor her grandmother Kathleen ... and she went with initials because her publishers thought young boys would avoid reading a book if it were clearly written by a woman.

Sources: Bloomsbury UK, The New York Times, Words Rated, History.com, The Guardian