![]() ![]() Her short story “Messages,” published near the end of her life, is composed of snippets of letters she received: The work of being a public figure was neatly summed up, for her, in the never-ending burdens of correspondence. I’m feeling pretty cocky but also trying to maintain my image: gentle, cultivated, enraptured child of nature.” ![]() I’ve still got masses to sort out with family and cousins and children’s culture reps and translators and art galleries. . . . In 1963, she wrote home, from the midst of professional obligations in Stockholm, “I was woken by another TV crew wanting a comment on the cultural situation. . . . Jansson travelled frequently to conduct her duties as the ambassador of Moominvalley, mingling at parties where businessmen wore Moomin ties. ![]() But most of Jansson’s fans arrived by way of the Moomins, a friendly species of her invention-rotund white creatures that look a little like upright hippos, and were the subject of nine best-selling books and a daily comic strip that ran for twenty years. ![]() Before her death, in 2001, at the age of eighty-six, Jansson produced paintings, novels, children’s books, magazine covers, political cartoons, greeting cards, librettos, and much more. Tove Jansson had the status of a beloved cultural icon-adored by children, celebrated by adults. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, one of the most famous cartoonists in the world was a lesbian artist who lived on a remote island off the coast of Finland. ![]()
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