Patricia Highsmith and her ashes were interred in its columbarium. She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of "Strangers on a Train". Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland. Her Swiss publisher, Diogenes Verlag, was appointed literary executor of the estate. Highsmith was a resolute atheist. Although she considered herself a liberal, and in her school years had gotten along with Black students, in later years she became
Patricia Schartle Myrer In 1960 Schartle helped to revive the Gothic romance genre when she persuaded Eleanor Hibbert to write a new series of novels under the name Victoria Holt. In 1956 Schartle met novelist Mary Higgins Clark through a writer's workshop and became her literary agent for twenty years until her retirement. Schartle and Higgins Clark became such good friends that Higgins Clark named her fifth and last child "Patricia Mary" for their "winning combination". Patricia Highsmith appointed Patricia Schartle as her literary agent in 1959, when Schartle was with Constance Smith Associates. After Constance Smith Associates merged with McIntosh & Otis