Overview

“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 sceptical 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.

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9781526671066

Table of Contents

Reviews

Irresistible – a sparkling read . . . Pixie’s voice skitters and skates across the page -- TIM PEARS, author of The Horseman A wonderful evocation of the life and times of a bewitching artist. Jill Dawson has a gift for turning up the unexpected card in any deck and Pixie is one of her best -- ROMESH GUNESEKERA, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Reef Brilliant, entertaining, wild and inspiring . . . Highly diverting and very addictive . . . Ambition, fame, art, the occult – what more could you ask for? Pixie finally brings Pamela Colman Smith out from beyond the esoteric veil of magic and mystery into full colour . . . Jill Dawson's writing is really storming -- BIDISHA

Brilliant, entertaining, wild and inspiring . . . Highly diverting and very addictive . . . Ambition, fame, art, the occult – what more could you ask for? Pixie finally brings Pamela Colman Smith out from beyond the esoteric veil of magic and mystery into full colour . . . Jill Dawson's writing is really storming -- BIDISHA

Author Information

Jill Dawson is the author of eleven novels and one poetry collection, and is 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.

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