Tove Jansson was born in 1914 in Helsinki and was a Finnish citizen, but the author's family belonged to the Swedish-speaking national minority, and the Moomins were written in Swedish. ¹⁾

Fifteen-year-old Tove aroused considerable interest among all the inhabitants of the Pelling archipelago, where she spent her vacations with her parents. The reason was the amazing leather pants that she had sewn herself. In the back and partly in the front they were made of cat skin, and on the sides, there were pieces of white goatskin with long hair, obtained from the collar received from the housekeeper. There was a small piece of black rabbit skin on the right leg. The legs came out slightly too narrow at the top and much too wide at the bottom. This outfit, though probably unpleasantly warm, became the girl's favorite garment to wear during the summer, causing her to be a stunner to many. ²⁾

Tove Jansson took many jobs, but painting was the closest to her heart. She considered herself first and foremost a painter, a visual artist who transformed all her thoughts and feelings into an art form. While in Paris she absorbed art and copied the masters, above all Rembrandt, whose self-portraits inspired her to make some of her own. ³⁾

The writer had two brothers who also became artists. Per Olov Jansson was a photographer (his photographs appeared in books written by his sister), Lars Jansson was a lyricist and cartoonist (he collaborated with his sister on the comics about the Moomins). ⁴⁾

By the time “The Moomins” was written, Tove Jansson was already an established illustrator and cartoonist of political cartoons. Tove's first illustrations of the Moomins appeared in print in 1938 in the anti-fascist Finnish magazine Garm. ⁵⁾