Life, Art, Words

By Boel Westin

Tove Jansson’s authorised biography.

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 prolific 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 Scandinavia’s best-loved author.

Tove Jansson’s work reflected the tenets of her life. Love and work was the motto she chose for herself and her approach to both was joyful and uncompromising. If her relationships with men were shaded by an 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 Pietilä, with whom she shared her solitary island of Klovharu.

In this meticulously researched, authorised biography, Boel Westin draws together the many threads of Jansson’s life: from the studies interrupted to help her family; the bleak war years 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’.

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About the author

Boel Westin is a professor of literature, researcher and a literary critic. She wrote the first doctoral thesis on Tove Jansson’s Moomin world in 1988. She is an expert on Tove Jansson’s art and lifework and was a trusted friend of the author.She has been honored with numerous awards throughout the years, including the 1989 award for meritorious academic research from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, the 2007 Astrid Lindgren Prize from Samfundet De Nio, the 2008 Gulliver Prize from IBBY Sweden, and the 2011 Schück Prize from the Swedish Academy.Boel lives in Stockholm, Sweden with her husband and cat.