Patricia Highsmith

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, published initially in 1950, proved to be a major commercial success and was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite this early recognition, Highsmith was unappreciated in the United States for the entire length of her career.

Writing under the pseudonym of Clare Morgan, she then published The Price of Salt in 1953, which had been turned down by her previous American publisher because of its frank exploration of homosexual themes. Her most popular literary creation was Tom Ripley, the dapper sociopath who first debuted in her 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. 

She followed with four other Ripley novels. Posthumously made into a major motion picture, The Talented Mr. Ripley has helped bring about a renewed appreciation of Highsmith’s work in the United States, as has the posthumous publication of The Selected Stories, which received widespread acclaim when it was published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2001. 

The author of more than twenty books, Highsmith, has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Litterature Policies, and the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain Award. She died in Switzerland on February 4, 1995 (read the New York Times obituary), and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.