Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was a lesbian writer of pulp fiction, best known for crime / suspense / mystery novels. Her stories sometimes included fantastic elements, psychological horror or vaguely supernatural horror. She also wrote for comic books in the 1940s.

She had relationships with Allela Cornell (an artist), and Marijane Meaker (who has written as Vin Packer, Ann Aldrich, and M. E. Kerr).

Although a lesbian / bisexual, she was sometimes called a misogynist; she was also sometimes called a misanthropist. Highsmith also voiced racist and anti-semitic opinions in her later life.

Notable works

• Strangers on a Train (1950) (filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951)
• The Price of Salt (1951, under pseudonym Claire Morgan; also published as 'Carol)
• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) (the first of the "Ripliad", featuring Tom Ripley, an anti-hero con-artist and murderer)
• Ripley's Game (1974)
• Edith's Diary (1977)
• Little Tales of Misogyny (1974 short stories))
• The Black House (1981 short stories)
• Mermaids on the Golf Course (1985 short stories)
• Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catatrophes (1987 short stories)

Further reading

• wikipedia
• Beautiful Shadow (biography)
• Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s by Marijane Meaker
• Jeanette Winterson, "Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Sight", The New York Times (Dec. 20, 2009)
• Patricia Cohen, "The Haunts of Miss Highsmith", New York Times, Dec. 10, 2009.

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