Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson grew up in Helsinki between a sculptor father and an illustrator mother, studied art across three cities from 1930 to 1938, and held her first solo exhibition in 1943. She wrote The Moomins and the Great Flood in 1945, but it was the next two books - Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll - that turned the series into a phenomenon and pulled the first book into success retroactively. She won the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966, kept painting through solo shows and mural commissions across Finland, and illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hobbit for other publishers. In 1968 she pivoted to adult fiction with The Sculptor's Daughter, a semi-autobiographical novel, then wrote five more novels including The Summer Book and five short story collections before her death in 2001.