Description

A sweeping and vivid novel inspired by the life of Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith, the illustrator behind the famed Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck–featuring line drawings from the iconic cards.

“Pixie”. I like it. “Pixie Pamela”. It’s a good name for me: sometimes tiny and invisible. Other times bouncing up to the ceiling to look down on everyone.It’s the turn of the twentieth century and Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith is a young woman of stark contradictions: plucky yet naïve, artistically gifted despite lacking classical training, fascinated by the esoteric but skeptical of the world around the deaths of her beloved mother and her troubled but well-intentioned father, Pixie finds herself in the complex, political world of fin-de-siècle art, trying to get her stunning work seen and to forge a name and a path for herself in life. Across Jamaica, Devon, London and Brooklyn, Pixie is a novel of epic proportions, a tale of the twists and turns, séances and secrets, successes and devastation, of one young woman’s talent, grit and Pixie, Whitbread and Orange Prize-shortlisted author Jill Dawson renders the real-life figure of Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith, artist, publisher and illustrator of the still-iconic Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, in arrestingly vivid detail, breathing life into a story that is instantly knowable, but has, until now, eluded popular imagination.

Author: Jill Dawson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 5/26/2026
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.32 lbs
Size: 8.59″ H x 5.36″ L x 1.66″ W
ISBN: 9781526671066