Best known to English-speaking audiences as the creator of the Moomin books, Tove Jansson was also a novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, painter, cartoonist and creator of picture-books. Tove Jansson Rediscovered brings the full range of Jansson’s artistic and literary creativity to light.
The nineteen essays in the volume, contributed by leading scholars from around the world, discuss themes of artistic and personal identity, gender and sexuality, childhood and old age in Jansson’s work. Jansson’s writing for children and adults, her paintings, cartoon-strips and illustrations are explored in contexts such as her membership of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and her life as an island-dweller.
Assembling scholarship in children’s literature, women’s writing, queer theory, linguistic analysis and reception studies, Tove Jansson Rediscovered updates the critical understanding of an extraordinary writer and artist.
“McLoughlin’s and Lidstrom Brock’s collection, the first of its kind in English, gives a fascinating picture of the work of Tove Jansson. It reads her well-known children’s fiction alongside her writings for adults and her visual art, and in the context of the traumatic period of Scandinavian history during which she lived. The essays are wide-ranging and the collection makes a strong claim for Jansson as an artist whose work repays detailed critical investigation.”
Dr. Alice Jenkins, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow
