Signed Patricia Highsmith Books: Edith's Diary, People Who Knock on the Door and Found in the Street

As I mentioned in my post the other week on a significant (to me, if no one else) piece of signed Patriciaphernalia relating to Ripley's Game, I also have several signed Patricia Highsmith first and other editions I've been meaning to blog about for bloody ages – which, in order of publication, are as follows:

A 1977 Heinemann first edition of Edith's Diary, Highsmith's seventeenth novel. I've blogged in brief before about a previous copy of this edition, bought in 2010 in the Chichester branch of Kim's Bookshop (which, I've only just learned, closed down last year, though the Arundel branch still seemingly prospers) and subsequently sold to, I think, my friend Ric, co-proprietor of Lewes's fine (and pretty much only these days) secondhand and antiquarian bookshop Bow Windows. (And in a pleasing instance of serendipity, just the other day Ric drew my attention to Elena Gosalvez Blanca's piece about her time as Highsmith's assistant, in which Blanca highlights Edith's Diary as her favourite Highsmith.) This copy, however, is signed on the title page:

And dated 21 November 1988, a good decade on from publication. What Highsmith was up to on that particular day I couldn't say – while I own Edith's Diary, I don't own Highsmith's Her Diaries and Notebooks, if that day is even mentioned in there – but Andrew Wilson's 2003 biography Beautiful Shadow suggests she might have been in America, where this copy came from. Evidently whatever she was doing included signing a book, and three years earlier, around summer 1985, Highsmith was also signing books:

Namely the first American edition of her nineteenth novel, People Who Knock on the Door, published by Penzler Books in a numbered, limited, signed edition in September 1985:

One of half a dozen of Highsmith's works published by Penzler in signed limited editions, this is another book I've blogged about before (again back in 2010) in its 1983 Heinemann first edition, when I was in the process of securing firsts of as many of Highsmiths as I could. And would you believe it I've blogged about the final book I'm showcasing before too, although not this particular edition:

An uncorrected advance proof of Found in the Street, Highsmith's twenty-first novel, published in the US in 1987 (the year after the UK Heinemann first edition) by Atlantic Monthly Press, with whom Highsmith signed after Otto Penzler dropped her dedication to "the Palestinian people and their leaders" from the above-showcased US edition of People Who Knock on the Door. This one I can state with reasonable certainty when and where it was signed, as it's an association copy originally belonging to Greg Gatenby, founding artistic director of the Toronto International Festival of Authors; his ownership signature can be seen on the half-title page above Highsmith's signature:

In October 1987 Highsmith was a guest at the festival, where she was interviewed for Sight & Sound magazine by film critic Gerald Peary, who noted what a coup her appearance was. According to Andrew Wilson, on 20 October, as part of her festival duties, Highsmith read from Found in the Street at Toronto's Harbourfront – and that locale, I would hazard, is where this proof of the US edition was signed.