Life, Art, Words, the authorised biography of Tove Jansson by Boel Westin, which originally came out in Swedish in 2007, is now available in the United States. The biography relies on numerous conversations with Jansson and unprecedented access to her journals, letters, and personal archives to present an engrossing and comprehensive review of the life and world of Tove Jansson.
As Westin’s meticulous research makes clear, Jansson’s artistic and literary works reflected what was most important to her: the love of family and nature and the desire to pursue her art. Guided by her personal motto, “Love and work,” Jansson seized both with uncompromising joy. And while her romantic relationships with men proved unfulfilling, she found those with women–especially with her longtime partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä – both grounding and inspiring.
The author Boel Westin is emeritus professor of literature and wrote the first doctoral thesis on Tove Jansson’s Moomin world, Familjen i dalen (1988). She has published several biographical works about Tove Jansson and was a personal friend of both Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä. Westin has also together with Helen Svensson edited the collection Letters from Tove (2014, Schildts & Söderströms) as well as written the texts about the people close to Tove Jansson in the People section on tovejansson.com.
For the launch of the book in the US, Westin was a guest on episode #605 of the podcast The History of Literature. In the interview, she reveals how she fell in love with the Moomins through the book Moominland Midwinter as a six-year-old, how it was to meet Tove Jansson for the first time and how they became friends.
In the book, Westin weaves together the many threads of Jansson’s rich, complex life: an education interrupted to help her family; the bleak war years and her emergence as a painter; the decades of Moominmania across books, newspaper comic strips, merchandise, and adaptations; her later fictions, including her popular The Summer Book; and her time with Pietilä on the solitary island of Klovharu. Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words offers fans and admirers around the world the most complete portrait of the writer Philip Pullman described as “a genius, a woman of profound wisdom and great artistry.”
Life, Art, Words is published in the US by University of Minnesota Press (525 pages), translated by Silvester Mazzarella. The UK edition is published by Sort of Books and the Swedish language edition, Ord, bild, liv: Tove Jansson, by Albert Bonniers förlag.
Reviews of the book in the US
”The first comprehensive biography of a creator whose reputation has only grown with time, Westin’s work, translated by Silvester Mazzarella, is thorough and well researched. […] a boon to all fans of the enigmatic Jansson”
Nadja Spiegelmann, The New York Times
“Scandinoir was born in November 1939, when the Soviet Army invaded Finland and the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson wrote a story in which a mother and child find themselves in a wood: “Once upon a time a Moomintroll was walking with his mother through a very strange forest.”
“Small books bearing great burdens, the Moomins contain the whole arsenal of Western literature.”
Francis Wilson, New York Review of Books
“A queer, iconoclast, anti-fascist, anti-war comic artist, and joyfully adventurous woman, the Tove Jansson brought to life by Boel Westin’s considered pen is a complicated, innovative creative in resolute pursuit of independence—in both her art and romances. Meticulously researched but rarely dry, this is a book for Moomin fans and art history lovers alike. It provides a deep look into both the personal life and recorded experiences of Tove Jansson, as well as the historical circumstances that gave rise to her singular artistic vision—which was, it turns out, far more oriented towards painting than illustration.”
Older reviews
From when the book was published in English for the first time by Sort of Books in 2014
Westin is at pains to show that, although the Moomins are Jansson’s lasting legacy and a significant body of work in their own right, there was more to her. The book gives equal weight to her achievements as a painter, cartoonist, muralist, memoirist and writer of fiction for adults.
It is also copiously illustrated with photos and reproductions of Jansson’s artwork, which is appropriate for a book about a woman for whom word and image were of equal significance and who did her utmost to find a harmonious balance between the two in her creative output.
James Lovegrove, Financial Times
“Moomin mania! An affectionate account of how an anti-fascist visionary created the hugely popular tales…. Boel Westin, professor of literature at the University of Stockholm, has written an affectionate biography. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the Moomin world and knew Jansson. In the book, Westin compares her to Shakespeare, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, even “Chekov spiced with Poe”. Actually, Jansson needs no such comparisons: that she wrote well is self-evident from the enduring popularity of her surreal and prankish tales.”
“This is a model biography, racy, unprurient, insightful, delightfully illustrated, true to its subject but also true to its own cleverly modulated narrative. One puts it down at last and says “O, to be a newly-woken Moomintroll dancing in the glass-green waves while the sun is rising”, which is a wish alike for childhood and for age.”
Brian Morton, The Herald
Moomin and Tove Jansson exhibitions worldwide
Why not head to a Moomin exhibition on a rainy day – here are the most interesting Moomin and Tove Jansson exhibitions around!
Moomins on display in HAM’s monumental Tove Jansson exhibition
Tove Jansson’s monumental murals will be featured in a new way at a major exhibition at HAM, the Helsinki Art Museum, in October.
Barnes & Noble expands Moomin selection tenfold across the United States
Barnes & Noble announces the expansion of stores carrying Moomin books and products in the United States. Now, Moomin products will be available in 260 stores nationwide!