Pamela Colman Smith is most known for her Rider-Waite tarot deck illustrations. However, she should also be acknowledged as a very talented writer, artist, and businesswoman. Smith was born in 1878 in London, England. In 1889 she moved to Kingston, Jamaica with her family. The culture of the West Indies inspired some of her future books such as, Chim-Chim published in 1905. Smith attended the Pratt Institute of Art and Design in New York from 1893 to 1897. However, she did not obtain a degree. The same year that she left Pratt, Macbeth’s New York gallery held her first art show. Smith moved back to London, England in 1899. While in London she met and collaborated with a number of other artists and writers such as Jack Yeats, W.B. Yeats, and George Moore.  In 1903, Smith began the publication of her own Little Magazine, The Green Sheaf. There were 13 issues of The Green Sheaf with the last one published in January of 1904. In 1911, Smith moved to New York once again but returned to London around 1914. Smith died in 1951 in Cornwall, England.

Source: Denisoff, Dennis. “Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951),” Y90s Biographies, edited by Dennis Denisoff. Yellow Nineties 2.0, General Editor Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2019, https://1890s.ca/smith_bio/.

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