The Moomin books about lovable trolls with hippopotamus snouts who live in harmony with nature are a global publishing phenomenon, having sold up to 30m copies since the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated them between 1945 and 1977.
Now previously unseen drawings of her eccentric characters will be among more than 100 exhibits in a major exhibition that is being staged in London 25 years after her death.
Tove Jansson and her Families will open at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in November, it will be announced on Thursday.
Billed as the UK’s first exhibition to focus on Jansson’s illustrations, it will feature sketches, photographs and films, as well as her correspondence with those closest to her and fans of all ages.
The displays will include original art from her first published book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, in which she presented a world “where everything was natural and benign – and possible”, in a story about Moomintroll’s search, with Moominmamma, for their missing Moominpappa and how they found their way to the magical Moominvalley.
Jansson’s books celebrate nature, friendship, tolerance and the freedom to be oneself. Enchanting children and adults alike, they have been translated into more than 60 languages, inspiring animated films, television series and theme parks.
Sophia Jansson, Tove’s niece, told the Guardian: “She had this very special skill to harness themes that touch the reader … on a universal and a personal level – and then disguise them in these stories, so that we think we’re reading about Moomins in Moominvalley and, when you finish the book, you realise that you’re actually reading about ‘us’, about humans and how we interact and all our peculiarities.”
Previously unseen material will include a sketch of Moominpappa, a sea-loving adventurer, with a giant shell. It was an early draft for the cover of Moominpappa at Sea, in which the Moomin family moves to a remote island at the mercy of the sea and storms.
It is among images that even Sophia, the creative director of the Moomins Characters brand, has not seen before, but which have recently come to light: “This is the amazing thing about Tove. She was extremely prolific.”
Asked whether this is the first-ever UK exhibition to focus on Jansson’s illustrations, Sophia said: “Definitely, because the one in Dulwich [Picture Gallery in 2017] was mainly to show her paintings.”
Paul Gravett, a Jansson expert and guest curator at the Quentin Blake Centre, told the Guardian: “The prose novels are still extremely topical because of the sheer variety of characters that are brought together. They are filled with a lot of love and tolerance, that ‘isn’t it wonderful how very different we all are?’
“Moomin celebrates that, enjoying eccentricity and going with the flow of life. This is one of the reasons that they’re not just for children. They have a lot of depth to them.”
Gravett said the draft book cover was different from the one eventually published, but “every bit as good”.
At the age of seven, Jansson was already writing and illustrating homemade booklets, which she sold to her classmates. Exhibits will include these drawings. “You can see a lot of the same fascination with fantasy and dreams, which came out of her childhood reading,” Gravett said.
Her passion for fantasy literature stayed with her. She illustrated Swedish editions of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark and Alice in Wonderland in a horror style. With JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, she reinterpreted his characters, making Gollum monstrously large.
Tolkien himself was surprised. Realising he had never clarified Gollum’s size, he amended the second edition to describe him as “a small, slimy creature”. The first English edition with Jansson’s illustrations will be published this month by HarperCollins.
Jansson was an outspoken political cartoonist, criticising fascism during the second world war, once saying: “Most of all I liked the fact that I got to be beastly to Hitler and Stalin.” In one cartoon, she depicted a woman and little girl in a toy shop with the caption: “Don’t you have a doll that says ‘Momma’?/ ‘No, little friend, our new stock says ‘Heil Hitler!’”
She had a special connection with London: at a time when it was rare for female cartoonists to have their own daily strip, her first Moomin series went into print from 1954 in London’s Evening News. Her comic strips were circulated worldwide.
Exhibits will include a sketch for one of the earliest examples. Gravett said: “It’s a miracle it survived because it’s covered in coffee stains and it was headed for the waste paper bin. A fellow cartoonist spotted it and rescued it.”
Gravett is working on a Jansson book, following his 2022 study of her illustration work.
Tove Jansson and her Families runs from 21 November to 9 May at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, Clerkenwell, London
