Tove Jansson © Per Olov Jansson
— Philip Pullman Tove Jansson, Finnish-Swedish writer and artist, was born in Helsinki in 1914 to a sculptor father and an artist mother. She grew up in a bohemian and creative family who were part of the Swedish-speaking Finnish minority.
for a part of Tove’s literary output; she went on to write a series of classic novels and short stories to establish herself as Scandinavia’s best loved author to date. Tove Jansson’s work reflects the tenets of her life: her love of family, of nature, and her insistence on freedom to pursue her art. “Work and love” was the motto she chose for herself, and her approach to both was joyful and uncompromising.
Tove soon proved herself to be a natural artist, having her first drawing published at the age of 15 in Garm, a liberal anti-fascist magazine. Tove became one of Finland’s most notable young artists in the 1930s and 1940s, admired in Nordic art circles as a painter, illustrator and later also as a cartoonist.
An important place for both Tove and her works was the island of Klovharun in the Pellinki archipelago, where she spent summers with her lifelong partner, the artist and professor Tuulikki Pietilä. During her career, Tove Jansson was awarded several important prizes, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Swedish Academy Award and the Finnish Award for State Literature three times. Her novels and short stories have been translated into over 30 languages.
Tove Jansson achieved worldwide fame as the creator of the Moomins, a collection of stories written and illustrated between 1945 and 1970. The Moomin books have been translated into more than 55 languages and remain in print all over the world today. But Moomins only count
In recent decades, Tove’s work has enjoyed a true revival in several countries. Contemporary authors have referred to her as an inspiration, including Ali Smith and Esther Freud who have both written introductions to English-language editions of her books.
© Sami Kuokkanen
“Tove Jansson was a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.”
TOVE – the acclaimed biopic about Tove Jansson Tove, the first fictional feature film about Tove Jansson, premiered in Finland in October 2020 and has since been sold to over 50 countries. It also won seven awards at Finland’s national film awards, the Jussi gala.
Originally published in Swedish in 1972 160 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1989 152 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1982 208 pages
Novels
“How lightly Tove Jansson’s fiction traverses the wide world. How profoundly it implicates us.” – Ali Smith
The Summer Book
Fair Play
The True Deceiver
An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter Sophia spend the summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. They wander the island, having philosophical conversations of all kinds, talking about death, or how best to dive into water. They fight. They curse. They have adventures, building things and breaking into the new summer house on a neighbouring island, outraged that the businessman who built it doesn’t leave the door open. Written with clarity, brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a fresh, vivid and magical novel about seemingly endless summers of discovery.
Through a series of vignettes, we look in on the lives of two female artists, Mari and Jonna, who live on opposite sides of an apartment building, separated by an attic. They are each other’s closest friend, greatest critic, and lover. We encounter them lost in a fog, vacationing on a remote Finnish island, fishing, feeding the cat, or simply rearranging photos on a wall. Tove’s whimsical yet philosophical prose about human generosity and respect perfectly echoes her signature subjects: work and love.
Snow has been falling on the village all winter long, and there is little to do but trade tales. Everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, ventures out from her large, empty house only in spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. Anna has something Katri wants - and by the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict that threatens the equilibrium of the whole village.
“The great benefit of reading Fair Play is that one enters into the same arrangement, becoming privy to two lifetimes’ worth of shared wonder.” — World Literature Today
Tove’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel works almost like a quiet psychological thriller: nothing much happens on the surface but the undercurrents are fierce and dangerous.
Sommarboken
“Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.” —Esther Freud
Rent spel
Den ärliga bedragaren
Originally published in Swedish in 1974 160 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1984 108 pages
“One of Jansson’s most deceptively quiet, most astonishing compositions.” — Ali Smith
Sun City Solstaden
The Field of Stones
This novella, about the inhabitants of a Florida retirement home, hints at the dark reality found behind a utopian vision. Alienation, abandonment and ageing foreshadow the spectre of death – with some people simply choosing to ignore it.
A recently retired journalist leaves the city to spend the summer in the country with his two daughters. Tasked with writing the biography of the unpleasant ‘Y’, he soon finds his chronicle of this character’s life morphing into his own family’s troubled story. The darkness that surfaces is handled with Tove’s distinct humour and lightness of touch.
Stenåkern
The Boulevard and other texts
Originally published in Finnish in 2017 504 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1996 103 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 2017 201 pages
Essays & Quotes
Notes from an Island
A Gift of Words
Anteckningar från en ö
Sanojen lahja
Fifteen unknown short stories and illustrated essays that were published in various papers are compiled here for the first time to add another dimension to Tove Jansson’s multifaceted work. Some of the texts reflect Tove’s views on 1930s Europe, written during her time spent in Paris, Dresden and Verona.
These observations, taken from the island of Klovharun and illustrated by Tuulikki Pietilä, cover all aspects of Tove’s and Tuulikki’s time in the Finnish archipelago – including their eventual decision to stop spending summers on the island.
Tove Jansson had a passion for art, life, love – and a gift for words. This beautiful book contains selected quotes by Tove, spanning her entire literary output. Tove’s words will inspire readers of all ages, offering hope, courage, comfort and joy in equal measure
Published originally in Swedish in 2020 by Förlaget M | 100 pages
Bulevarden och andra texter
Moomin Comics
Logbook
The Moomin comics were originally created by Tove Jansson for The Evening News in London, the world’s biggest newspaper at that time. The comic was commissioned in the 1950s, and first Tove, later also her brother, Lars Jansson, produced the Moomins’ adventures daily for over 20 years. The comics were syndicated to 120 newspapers in over 40 countries, reaching more than 20 million daily readers.
All the important details for boating can be noted down in this beautiful logbook: essential information on the vessel, details of sea journeys and weather conditions, incidents on both at sea and the harbour.
The comics have now been collected and published in 10 chronological black-and-white volumes. Drawn & Quarterly has extracted single-story adventures from the albums and carefully coloured them according to Tove’s original palette. There are 10 black-and-white Moomin comic collections and 15 coloured single story adventures available.
Loggbok
This sailor’s diary withholds quotes, drawings and paintings that Tove Jansson created in her uncle Harald Hammersten’s logbook during their adventurous sea journeys. The sea was close to Tove Jansson’s heart, and also strongly present in her works.
Originally published in Swedish in 1978 208 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1968 192 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1971 192 pages
Short stories
“A wonderful archipelago of stories.” - The Independent
The Listener
A Sculptor’s Daughter
The Doll’s House
The Listener was the first of Tove Jansson’s books to be published after the death of her mother, the point at which she declared the Moomin series over. This collection of short stories is different from Tove’s previous work; fragmentary, starting and stopping in the middle of things. Fascinatingly, the illustrator Edward Gorey appears in one of the stories saying: “It’s the unexpressed that interests me ... it’s a mistake to clarify everything.” This seems to aptly describe Tove’s writing.
Tove Jansson’s first book for adults captures her childhood memories, as she grew up in an early-twentieth-century Helsinki that was getting used to independence from Russian rule. This atmospheric book is filled with sharp observations on the mysteries of winter ice, the bonhomie of balaika parties, and the limitless excitement of Christmas viewed from beneath the tree. While Tove learns a lot from her father, her identity as a writer is formed partly in opposition to him — especially when it comes to the subject of women and art.
A collection of twelve short stories about obsession and ambition. Witty, sharp and often disquieting, these stories explore human nature and the way in which mysteries and uncertainty—even illness and danger—can have positive and magical potential. The stories share a recurring theme: what happens when artists and eccentrics, who hide away in the back corners of middle-class society, try to change their already difficult relationship with the world?
“Tove Jansson was one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, enigmatic prose writers.” — Boston Globe
“Even Jansson’s loneliest, craggiest stories have a kind of fierce beauty to them, (coming from) simple contrasts and contradictions: the introvert who also wants a connection with his fellows; the storm gathering outside even as coffee simmers on the stovetop. This is the beauty of the ordinary, and it can be very beautiful indeed.“ — Book Reviews
Travelling Light
Letters from Klara
A collection of twelve short stories about journeys of different kinds: some inward, some outward, all with complicated, unpredictable characters observing their surroundings as travellers, or with the unfettered gaze of a child. Tove’s signature deftness of touch and imagination gives these stories a duality between light and darkness.
In this nimble, beautifully-crafted yet disquieting collection of stories, Tove Jansson explores the complicated games and relationships between people, writing from the perspective of a bewildered young artist, a resilient child or an irascible elderly correspondent. Discomfiting encounters and periods of isolation can span decades, generations even. A simple letter can reveal as much of the sender as the receiver, and how easy it can be to misunderstand one another.
Resa med lätt bagage
“The touch of her pen recalls that of a watercolour.” —The Short Review
Dockskåpet
Originally published in Swedish in 1998 303 pages
Bildhuggarens dotter
Originally published in Swedish in 1991 175 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 1987 224 pages
Lyssnerskan
Brev från Klara
Messages: A selection of short stories Meddelande
A marvellous collection of Tove Jansson’s prose, spanning most of the twentieth century and scattered with insights into beauty found in the everyday. Messages features several stories from A Sculptor’s Daughter as well as Tove’s later story collections.
Biography
Originally published in Swedish in 2014 491 pages
Originally published in Swedish in 2007 596 pages
© Per Olov Jansson
Contact
Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words
Tove Jansson: Ord, bild, liv By Boel Westin 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. 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’.
Letters from Tove Brev från Tove By Boel Westin and Helen Svensson
A must read for any Tove and Moomin fan: An intimate, captivating collection of correspondence becomes a unique presentation of Tove Jansson’s artistry. These personal letters are a new and inspiring way to get to know the real Tove. Penned with charm and humour, Letters from Tove offers an almost seamless commentary on Tove Jansson’s life as it unfolds within Helsinki’s bohemian circles and her dear island home Klovharu. The letters span six decades from the 1930’s to the 1980’s, from her art studies, through the height of Moomin fame, to her travels later in life with her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä. By reading them one shares her adventures as an art student in Stockholm and Paris, the bleakness of war, her hopes for love that were dashed and renewed, and her determined attempts to establish herself as an artist.
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