The Glass Cell

The Glass Cell (1964) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. It was the tenth of her 22 novels. It addresses the psychological and physical impact of wrongful imprisonment. It appeared in both the UK and the US in 1964. When first published, the book jacket carried a warning that its opening scene is "almost unacceptable". It was republished by W.W. Norton & Company in 2004 and by Virago in 2014. Composition Highsmith received a fan letter in 1961 from a prison inmate who had enjoyed her novel Deep Water (1957). They exchanged several letters and she used him for research, requesting detail of daily life in prison. She then came across a journalist's account of an innocent man's prison experiences that provided her with more material. She also relied on John Bartlow Martin's account of the 1952 riots in the Michigan State Prison, Break Down the Walls (1954). She used his detailed description of solitary confinement and adopted his thorough critique of imprisonment in the United States. She began work on the novel in September 1962. Her working title was The Prisoner. She visited a prison near her Pennsylvania home in December, though she could only see from the reception area. She wrote much of the novel in Positano in 1963. Her editor at Harper & Brothers rejected the manuscript and requested major changes, especially to establish Carter's character before his imprisonment. Highsmith found herself blocked for a time until the acceptance of other manuscripts (The Two Faces of January by Doubleday in the US and a short story by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine) restored her confidence. She reworked the manuscript and placed it with Doubleday and Heinemann in the spring of 1964. Highsmith dedicated the novel to her cat Spider. Highsmith devoted a chapter of her non-fiction Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966) to The Glass Cell as "The Case History of a Novel".