Patricia Highsmith was a talented American novelist and short story writer known for her thrillers and macabre films. Her works, including Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, have been adapted for film. Highsmith had a complicated childhood and studied English composition at Barnard College. She wrote many novels with homosexual themes and moved to Europe in 1963, where she continued to write until her death in 1995.
Patricia Highsmith was one of the most talented American novelists and short story writers of the 20th century. She is well known for her claustrophobic thrillers and her macabre short films. Many of her works, notably Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, have been adapted for film.
Patricia Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas on January 19, 1921. Her parents were divorced five months before Patricia’s birth, and she spent her early childhood with her grandmother, who instilled in her a love for reading. Highsmith later moved in with her mother and stepfather, with whom her life was very stressful. Her relationship with her mother in particular was stormy and complicated.
Highsmith studied English composition at Barnard College, graduating in 1942. He began writing professionally for various comic publishers soon after graduating and spent his twenties living in New York and Mexico. His first novel, Strangers on a Train, was published in 1950. It was moderately successful, but it was not until Hitchcock’s 1951 adaptation of the novel that Highsmith’s career really started to take off. Other than Strangers on a Train, Highsmith is perhaps best known for her novel series featuring the Tom Ripley character.
Much of Highsmith’s fiction, including Ripley’s novels, has homosexual themes, and in 1953 he wrote the first homosexual fiction with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. she some with men, but she was a private person who suffered from alcoholism and had difficulty maintaining relationships in general. Her longest relationship, with fellow writer Marijane Meaker, lasted only two years, from 1959 to 1961.
In 1963, Highsmith became disillusioned with American culture and foreign policy, which she considered hypocritical, and moved to Europe, where she was to spend the rest of her life. She continued to write until her last days, in which she suffered from leukemia. Patricia Highsmith died on February 4, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland, and her last novel, Small g: a Summer Idyll, was published a week later.
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