Description
Book SynopsisPamela Colman Smith is the mysterious artist behind the most renowned tarot deck in the world, for many years forgotten. In a revival of interest in esoteric artists and accessible tarot, curiosity about Pamela is now on the ascendant, but there are still many unanswered questions, especially concerning her later life. Born in London to American parents, Pamela was a prolific illustrator and artist who mixed with the great and good of art and theatre, among them W. B. Yeats and Bram Stoker. ‘Adopted’ by actress Ellen Terry, she spent some years with the Lyceum Theatre crowd, also working as an exotic storyteller, known as Gelukiezanger, in bohemian London. People have questioned her sexuality, her ethnic origins and alleged synaesthesia, assuming her to be biracial and lesbian. These are discussed but the biggest mystery of all is why she converted from mysticism to Catholicism in 1911, removing herself from vibrant London to the isolated Lizard in the west of Cornwall. There, living in relative obscurity, she evangelised Catholicism in a heavily non-conformist area, before moving to Bude in her sixties.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; 1 The Pious Pixie; 2 Childhood: A Bird of Passage; 3 A Woman of Colour?; 4 Her Letters to Bigelow Paine; 5 Mixing with the Great and Good; 6 The Flavour of Rejection; 7 Ellen Terry, Surrogate Mother?; 8 Earning Some Pennies; 9 Bad Bohemians; 10 The Yeats Connection; 11 Fine Artist or Jobbing Illustrator?; 12 A Diluted Talent; 13 Synaesthesia or Simply Technique?; 14 Seeking Meaning: Mysticism and Religion; 15 Pamela the Outsider; 16 No Brooklyn Belle; 17 The Woman Question; 18 Pamela’s Love Life; 19 The Sapphic Rumour; 20 Once a Catholic: The Mission Years; 21 Her Cornish Exile; 22 The Catholic Correspondence; 23 Testing Times; 24 Bude’s Miss Smith; 25 Did Pamela Die a Pauper?; Appendix: Timeline; Endnotes; Bibliography.
