During her career, Tove Jansson also illustrated books written by other prestigious authors. The two most important of these were illustrated in the 1960s, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In 1959 Tove was also asked to illustrate the Swedish version of Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.

Unique opportunities to illustrate other’s books were interesting projects for Tove and illustrations were stunning and personal like Tove’s illustrations normally were. It was Astrid Lindgren, author of the universally beloved Pippi Longstockings, who as an editor and publisher by the Stockholm publishing house Rabén & Sjögren approached Tove and asked her to illustrate the Swedish edition of The Hobbit.

Tove Jansson found it very important to try to free herself from the “Moomin style”. This led to an attempt to change the way in which she drew. Tove tried different techniques and draw each figure freely again and again 20 – 60 times until she was happy with the result. From the book vignette illustrations, it is impossible to notice how the individual figures are pasted together into ‘a patchwork’ that made up each vignette.

A vignette for J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit by Tove Jansson:

The individual figures and the final version of the illustration

The majority of the full-page illustrations follow the characteristic style of Tove’s illustrations for the Moomin books.

The 80th anniversary of the Hobbit