Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith, born Mary Patricia Plangman on January 19, 1921, in Fort Worth, Texas, was a highly acclaimed American author, best known for her psychological crime thrillers. Highsmith's mother, Mary Coates, divorced her natural father six months before her birth and married Stanley Highsmith. The couple eventually moved to New York in 1927, taking Patricia with them. However, Patricia returned to live with her grandmother for a year in 1933 before rejoining her parents in New York. She attended public schools in New York City and graduated from Barnard College in 1942.

Highsmith's writing career took off in 1945 when her short story 'The Heroine' was published in Harper's Bazaar magazine and won the O Henry award for short stories in 1946. She continued to write short stories, many of them comic book stories, and regularly earned herself a weekly $55 pay-check. Her first suspense novel, 'Strangers on a Train', published in 1950, was an immediate success, and she went on to write 22 novels and eight short story collections. Highsmith's works often featured macabre, satirical, or black humor elements and were more popular in England than in her native United States.

Highsmith's personal life was complicated, and she struggled with alcoholism and a lack of intimate relationships. She was known to be cruel, hard, mean, and unlovable, with a particular resentment towards her stepfather. Highsmith was a cat and snail lover, breeding over 300 snails in her home garden. She never married or had children. Highsmith passed away on February 4, 1995, in Locarno, Switzerland, from leukemia. Her last novel, 'Small g: a Summer Idyll', was published posthumously a month later. Highsmith's literary legacy is significant, with many of her works adapted for the screen and her innovative contributions to the psychological thriller genre widely recognized.