29 Facts About Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson held her first solo art exhibition in 1943.

Tove Jansson continued her work as an artist and writer for the rest of her life.

Tove Jansson wrote the Moomin novel series for children, starting with the 1945 The Moomins and the Great Flood.

Tove Jansson held a solo exhibition of paintings in 1955, and five more between 1960 and 1970.

Tove Jansson carried out several commissions for murals in public buildings around Finland between 1945 and 1984.

Tove Jansson created the illustrations both for her own books and for classics including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hobbit.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki, in the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire at the time.

Tove Jansson's family, part of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, was an artistic one: her father, Viktor Jansson, was a sculptor, and her mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was a Swedish-born graphic designer and illustrator.

Tove's siblings became artists: Per Olov Jansson became a photographer and Lars Jansson an author and cartoonist.

Tove Jansson sold drawings that were published in magazines in the 1920s.

Tove Jansson drew from these for her short stories and articles, which she illustrated, and which were published in magazines, periodicals and daily papers.

Tove Jansson is principally known as the author of the Moomin books.

Tove Jansson created the Moomintrolls, a family who are white, round and smooth in appearance, with large snouts that make them vaguely resemble hippopotamuses.

Tove Jansson first drew a deliberately ugly creature as a caricature of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher; a kinder version became the Moomintroll.

Critics have interpreted various Moomin characters as being inspired by real people, especially members of the author's family and close friends, and Tove Jansson spoke in interviews about the backgrounds of, and possible models for, her characters.

The personality of Tuulikki Pietila, Tove Jansson's partner, inspired the character Too-Ticky in Moominland Midwinter, while Moomintroll and Little My have been seen as psychological self-portraits of the artist.

Jansson remained close to her mother until her mother's death in 1970; even after Tove had become an adult, the two often traveled together, and during her final years Signe lived with Tove part-time.

Tove Jansson went on to write five more novels for adults, including and five collections of short stories.

Tove Jansson worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Swedish-language satirical magazine Garm from 1929 to 1953, when the magazine ceased production.

Tove Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew "the ugliest creature imaginable" on the wall of their outhouse and wrote under it "Kant".

In 1952, after Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll had been translated into English, a British newspaper man, Charles Sutton, asked if Tove Jansson would be interested in drawing comic strips about the Moomins.

Tove Jansson exhibited during the 1930s and early 1940s, holding her first solo exhibition in 1943.

Tove Jansson created a set of illustrations for the 1962 Swedish edition of JR R Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit.

The scholar of literature Bjorn Sundmark states that Tove Jansson's work helped to define how Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy could be depicted visually.

In 1952, Tove Jansson designed stage settings and dresses for Pessi and Illusia, a ballet by Ahti Sonninen which was performed at the Finnish National Opera.

Tove Jansson had several male lovers, including the political philosopher Atos Wirtanen, and briefly became engaged to him.

Tove Jansson was the inspiration for the Moomin character Snufkin.

Tove Jansson is buried at the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki.

In 2014, Tove Jansson herself was featured on a Finnish stamp set.