Includes indexes.

The 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 prodigious output. Already admired 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. In this meticulously researched biography, Boel Westin draws together the many threads of Tove Jansson's artistic and writing life, from her emergence as a talented artist and illustrator, throughher extraordinary creation of the Moomins and the later years of writing novels such as 'the summer book.'