Pauline Winchester Inman was born March 24, 1904 in Chicago, to Rev. Dr. Benjamin and Pearl Gunn Winchester. A 1926 graduate of Smith College, she taught at Rye Country Day School and was head of the Chapin Middle School in New York City. She studied wood engraving at the Art Students League, Parsons School of Design, and Columbia University. Her works are in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. She illustrated The Down East Reader, How To Know American Antiques, and Antiques Guide to Decorative Arts.

Inman's interest in her family genealogy led her to contact a distant cousin in Portland, Oregon, Frances Knapp Morgan. They began corresponding in 1958 and continued until Morgan's death in 1965. In 1959 Morgan re-discovered her notes and manuscripts about the Tlingit Indians, collected during her residence in Sitka, Alaska from 1890-1893. The papers had been missing for almost 70 years. Inman and Morgan collaborated on a manuscript based on these notes. The manuscript was rejected for publication, as were several other revisions with varying titles, because, among other reasons, the subject was determined to be "too unfamiliar to have appeal for the great general public." Frances Knapp Morgan sent the newly recovered notes and manuscripts to her cousin, Pauline Winchester Inman, for revision and publication. Rather than editing the tales as a companion volume, Inman collaborated with Frances Knapp Morgan to incorporate the published work, The Thlinkets of Southeastern Alaska, and the unpublished manuscript, Tales of the Sitka Indians, into one volume, a new, enlarged version titled Bluejay Fly with Me. Several publishers rejected the manuscript. Pauline Winchester Inman died January 16, 1990 in Newtown, Connecticut.