Pamela Colman Smith
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Pamela Colman Smith (February 16, 1878 - September 18, 1951) was an artist, illustrator, and writer. Her chief claim to fame is designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite.
Smith was born in England to American parents, and grew up in Jamaica. She toured with the theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in the late 1890s.
She later moved to England where she became a theatrical designer designer for a miniature theatre and an illustrator. She joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1903, and met Waite for whom she designed the 78 Rider-Waite tarot cards as paintings. She also did 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.
Smith wrote and illustrated several books about Jamaican folklore, including Annancy Stories (1902) which were about Jamaican versions of tales involving the traditional African folk figure Anansi the Spider.
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