Florence Scovel Shinn

Florence Scovel Shinn (September 24, 1871 – October 17, 1940) was an American artist and book illustrator who became a New Thought spiritual teacher and metaphysical writer in her middle years.

In New Thought circles, Shinn is best known for her first book, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925). She expressed her philosophy as:

The invisible forces are ever working for man who is always "pulling the strings" himself, though he does not know it. Owing to the vibratory power of words, whatever man voices, he begins to attract.--The Game of Life, Florence Scovel Shinn

Early life and education

Florence Scovel was born in Camden, New Jersey, the daughter of Alden Cortlandt Scovel and Emily Hopkinson Scovel. Her great-great-grandfather, Francis Hopkinson, signed the United States Declaration of Independence and is the earliest-documented American composer of song.

She was educated in Philadelphia, where she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and met her future husband, the artist Everett Shinn (1876–1953). After marriage, they moved into a studio apartment at 112 Waverly Place, near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York City, where Everett built a theatre next door and wrote three plays in which Florence played a leading role. They spent their summers in Plainfield, New Hampshire (Cornish Art Colony), in a Colonial-style house designed by her husband. Florence and Everett divorced in 1912.

Illustrator

Florence worked as an illustrator in the early 1900s. She illustrated fiction in Harper's and other magazines, as well as popular novels such as Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901). The Society of Illustrators elected her to an Associate Membership in 1903, even though it did not admit women to full membership in the organization until 1922.