ANTECKNINGAR FRÅN EN Ö. [English title: Notes from an Island].

First edition. Signed by the author. Publisher's original blue cloth with white titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. Text in Swedish. Illustrated with sepia washes and aquatints by Tuulikki Pietila throughout. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping at the the extremities. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's marks. Complete with the rubbed and lightly marked dustwrapper that has a little laminate lift to the bottom corner of the front panel.

Inscribed by Tove Jansson "Till Bo / au Tove och" next to which Tuulikki Pietilä has signed her name and added the date "12.4.1996". The recipient is the Finland Swedish poet and author Bo Carpelan (1926-2011). A wonderful association copy. In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by a maverick fisherman named Brumström, raced to build a cabin on a treeless skerry in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, and for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the graphic artist, Tuulikki Pietilä, retreated there to live, paint and write, energised by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The book is both a chronicle of this period and a homage to the mature love that Tove and 'Tooti' shared for their island and for each other. Tove's spare prose, and Tuulikki's subtle washes and aquatints combine to form a work of meditative beauty.