Pamela Coleman Smith was an artist, illustrator, and writer. Born in Pimlico, Middlesex (now London), Smith was the daughter of American merchant Charles Edward Smith and Corinne Colman. Smith’s life was often very transitory. Her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company stationed the family throughout Europe and North America’s eastern coast, and after her mother’s death when Smith was ten she was taken in by family friends who performed in the Lyceum traveling theatre.

In 1893, Smith moved to Brooklyn to be with her father. There, at age 15, she enrolled at the relatively new Pratt Institute and studied art under Arthur Wesley Dow. After her graduation four years later she returned to England, where she became an illustrator and theatrical designer.

Smith wrote and illustrated several books, and designed the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of Tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite in 1909—designs still used today. Smith would also do a great deal of illustration work for William Butler Yeats and his brother Jack, but apart from the tarot deck, her art found little commercial success.

She never married. After the end of the First World War, Smith received an inheritance that enabled her to move to Cornwall, an area popular with artists. She died in Bude, Cornwall on the 18th of September, 1951. After her death, all of her personal effects, including her paintings and drawings, were sold at auction to satisfy her debts.