Pixie - Hardcover – The Tale Trade

Pixie - Hardcover

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by Jill Dawson (Author)

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 her.

After 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 determination.

In 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 Biography

Jill Dawson is the author of eleven novels and one poetry collection and the editor of six anthologies of poetry and stories. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has been a Costa Judge, and has taught creative writing in many different settings. She lives in Cambridgeshire, England.

Number of Pages: 400

Dimensions: 1.66 x 8.59 x 5.36 IN

Publication Date: May 26, 2026