A Hobbit with Moomin connections arrives
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien with illustrations by Tove Jansson, published October 2026
My Goodreads rating: 5 of 5 stars for presentation overall!
This is the fourth Hobbit* in my library, and I'm overjoyed to finally have it. As you can tell from the pink-and-blue cover, this isn't your granddaddy's Hobbit (unless Gramps was Swedish). Rather this is the Tove Jansson illustrated edition originally commissioned by Swedish children’s book author and editor Astrid Lindgren in the 1960s.
Yes the author of Pippi Longstocking asked the creator of the Moomins to illustrate The Hobbit. All of which I loved as kid (and still do). You can read the whole history of the collaboration at the Jansson website.
Jansson's illustrations appeared in a Swedish and a Finnish edition, but never made it to an English edition until this year. Over the years, I stewed about buying a Jansson-illustrated Hobbit, but the books are rare and expensive. Tolkien fans and Moomin fans tend to bid up this one whenever it appears on Ebay. Also, when I'm looking at the pictures, I do like to read the text. Having neither Swedish or Finnish skills, I passed.
However, in honor of the Hobbit's 90th birthday, the publishers issued this lovely hardcover edition with all her evocative black-and-white illustrations. As soon as I heard about it, I put in my order. And waited rather impatiently as it came out in United Kingdom more than a month before the United States.
Still, the book arrived in blue-and-pink glory just in time for my birthday. Purchasing this Hobbit as a "birthday book" justified adding yet another copy of the same book to the shelf. Although if it came out in June, I probably would have said it was a summer solstice celebration.
Famously Jansson drew Gollum as an oversized troll, Tolkien objected, and then everyone realized that Gollum's size was not in the original text. When Tolkien rewrote the riddle scene to fit with the Lord of the Rings plot, this size issue was corrected. That is the text used in this 2026 edition. Even so, I still think the illustration works. One can see it as Bilbo's view of the creature looming before him in the dark, much larger and dangerous than poor Mr Baggins. For fans of hobbits and Moomins, this long awaited edition nicely bridges two very creative if different views of Norse mythology. Truly fun for me is pulling out the 50th anniversary edition which is filled with Tolkien's own gorgeous watercolors of his story and seeing which scenes both illustrated. Unfortunately, there's only one full-color Jansson illustration, used as the frontispiece, but it's a doozy with Smaug.
Now that I've finished this Hobbit, I'm onto another "birthday book." After several years of longing, I tracked down an early 20th century copy of Undine with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. I'll be posting a review about that on Goodreads in the next few days. The bookmark is unrelated to either book, but nicely color coordinates.
*The other Hobbits in my collection are the 50th anniversary edition, a tattered mass market paperback from my childhood, and a 1960s hardcover with the blue-and-green dust jacket picked up at a library sale. I did see an American first edition on sale at the Seattle Antiquarian Bookfair. It was absolutely out of my price range but fun to see the tiny bowing hobbit gracing the cover. The drawing was done by the author:
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