Hobitti eli sinne ja takaisin by J.R.R. Tolkien

She strived to interpret Tolkien’s characters in a free way and did not sketch with pencil underneath the felt pen, like she was used to doing in her Moomin illustrations. ‘I have tried to free myself from my “Moomin style” with its careful line-drawing and painstakingly filled surfaces,’ Jansson wrote to Lindgren. Jansson described to Lindgren how she absolutely wanted to keep apart the illustrations for the Tolkien book and the style she had developed for her own Moomin world. She drew every character 20 to 60 times in a freehand manner before she was satisfied. It was a book that neither of them had written the illustrations were by Jansson and Lindgren acted as editor.

As Boel Westin writes in her book Life, Art, Words, the Tolkien project was a unique collaboration between two of the internationally most famous children’s book authors from the Nordics. Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr, illustrated by Tove Jansson, was published two years later. Jansson did not hesitate to take on making the illustrations to Tolkien’s classic. Like this wrote Astrid Lindgren to Tove Jansson in 1960. “… this will be the children’s book of the century, and will live long after we are dead and buried.” Runnquist asked Jansson to illustrate another of Lewis Carroll’s books in 1965, namely Alice in Wonderland, and even though she at that time was busier than ever, she could not resist the temptation to accept the proposal. The proposal to illustrate the book came from the editor Åke Runnquist and it was the starting point of a meaningful collaboration and friendship. One of her most significant commissions was the making of the illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark in 1958.

Tove Jansson was known world-wide as an author, illustrator, cartoonist and painter with an enormous production of her own, but she also illustrated the books of other appreciated authors. She wrote: ‘God bless you for Toffle!! But who will comfort Astrid if you don’t agree to the proposal I’m now going to make to you?’ The request came from the Swedish children’s book author Astrid Lindgren, who at the time was publisher at Rabén & Sjögren. In the year 1960, Tove Jansson was asked to make the illustrations for the new Swedish translation of J.

Hobitti eli sinne ja takaisin by J.R.R. Tolkien