Tove Jansson Life Art Words: The Authorised Biography

About this book

The Finnish-Swedish writer and artist Tove Jansson achieved worldwide fame as the creator of the Moomin stories written between 1945 and 1970 and still in print in more than twenty languages. However the Moomins were only a part of her prodigious output. Already admired in Nordic art circles as a painter cartoonist and illustrator she would go on to write a series of classic novels and short stories. She remains Scandinavias best loved author. Tove Janssons work reflected the tenets of her life: her love of family (and special bond with her mother) of nature and her insistence on freedom to pursue her art. Love and work was the motto she chose for herself and her approach to both was joyful and uncompromising. If her relationships with men foundered on her ambivalence towards marriage those with women came as a revelation especially the love and companionship she found with her long-time partner the artist Tuulikki Pietil with whom she lived on the solitary island of Klovharu. In this meticulously researched authorised biography Boel Westin draws together the many threads of Janssons life: from the studies interrupted to help her family; the dark shades of war and her emergence as an artist with a studio of her own; to the years of Moomin-mania and later novel writing. Based on numerous conversations with Tove and unprecedented access to her journals letters and personal archives Tove Jansson: Life Art Words offers a rare and privileged insight into the world of a writer whom Philip Pullman described simply as a genius.