The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Highsmith, Patricia
Highsmith, Patricia
(
1921
–
95
), writer of mixed German and English–Scots parentage, educated at Barnard College at Columbia University, New York. Her stylish crime novels have a distinctively black humour: the best known (The Talented Mr Ripley,
1956
; Ripley under Ground,
1971
; Ripley's Game,
1974
, etc.) feature her amoral anti-hero, the leisure-loving amateur villain Tom Ripley, resident in France. The Price of Salt, a novel with a lesbian theme and a happy ending, was published pseudonymously (under the name of
Claire
Morgan
) in
1952
, and appeared under her own name in
1990
, retitled Carol. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, about a bohemian café in Zurich, was published in
1995
.
[The entire page is 121 words long]
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