Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Highsmith wrote 22 novels, including her series of five novels with Tom Ripley as protagonist, and many short stories. Existentialism is the literary movement that most influenced her writing, with "Dostoyevsky and Gide through Camus and Sartre" among favorite authors. Graham Greene described Highsmith as "the poet of apprehension rather than fear. Fear after a time...is narcotic, it can lull one by fatigue into sleep, but apprehension nags at the nerves gently and inescapably." Published under the pseudonym of "Claire Morgan", Highsmith wrote the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name. 2Early life Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas. She was the only child of artists Jay Bernard Plangman (1889–1975), who was of German descent, and Mary Plangman (née Coates; September 13, 1895 – March 12, 1991). The couple divorced ten days before their daughter's birth. In 1927, Highsmith, her mother and her adoptive stepfather, artist Stanley Highsmith, whom her mother had married in 1924, moved to New York Cit