Highsmith, Patricia

8vo (201 x 134mm.), FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ON THE FRONT FREE ENDPAPER ("To Barbara, | with thanks. My | favourite book, and with | hopes of writing better | ones.| And with memories of | Mexico (x), and |expectations of Europe, | Pat Highsmith."), original black cloth, dust-jacket, preserved in matching green cloth folding box, closed tears and tiny chipping to edges of jacket

Sothebys New York, 21 June 2007, lot 123

A SUPERB PRESENTATION COPY OF THE FIRST RIPLEY NOVEL AND THE AUTHOR'S MOST CELEBRATED NOVEL. The recipient is the copywriter Barbara Windham, with her ownership signature also on the front endpaper. In Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, Andrew Wilson writes, "As spring warmed the city, Highsmith's spirits received a well-needed boost by the start of a new relationship with a thirty-four-year-old female copywriter who cannot be named.  By May of 1956, Highsmith had started dedicating poems to her and then in June, after a trial period of living together in New York, they moved to the countryside.  With them came a new chrome and black Ford convertible, a boxer dog and a pair of Siamese cats."  At the beginning of 1957, the pair made a two-month long visit to Mexico, which served as the setting for her novel A Game for the Living, which was published in 1958. The Talented Mr. Ripley is Highsmith's most widely read book.  It received numerous literary awards including the Edgar Allan Poe Scroll, presented by the Mystery Writers of America in April 1956, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958.  It has inspired a number of different film treatments, with actors as diverse as Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, and Matt Damon playing Ripley.  The amoral Tom Ripley was to remain Highsmith's favourite of all her fictional creations and the one she most closely identified with.  She once remarked of this novel, "I often had the feeling that Ripley was writing it and I was merely typing."