In 1981, John Crowley’s novel Little, Big was published. The World Fantasy Award-winning novel has, over the last four decades, found incredibly passionate fans. On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, Jonathan Thornton wrote, “It remains the kind of book that quietly changes people’s lives.”
And for almost twenty years, an anniversary edition of this life-changing book has been in the works. It’s quite the saga, and it has a happy ending: books are finally ready to ship. It took years—and the help of Neil Gaiman—to bring this project to light.
The anniversary edition comes from a small, fine-edition press called Incunabula, and its editor and publisher, Ron Drummond. His connection to Crowley is plain in his resume; Drummond published Crowley’s Antiquities: Seven Stories in 1993, and edited his 2000 novel Dæmonomania. But even before that, Drummond noted in a 2009 update post, the two were talking about a “museum-quality” edition of Little, Big.
The project officially launched in 2004. (For those who don’t want to do the math: the 25th anniversary was in 2006.) Three editions were announced—a trade edition, numbered edition, and lettered edition, all with art by Peter Milton. The model of its publication will be somewhat familiar to anyone who’s ever backed a Kickstarter, though this project predates that website by several years: The idea was that the publication was paid for by those who pre-bought the book, on what the publisher called “a subscription basis”—or, in more poetic terms, a parliament of readers.
The book features the author’s preferred text, and Crowley was involved from the start; a note (in his beautiful handwriting) is posted on the book’s site that reads:
Every author dreams that his work will be afforded all the care in editing, design, and production that he would give it himself, if he could. That (usually futile) dream was fulfilled for me when Incunabula published a collection of my stories called Antiquities, a marvellous (and now quite valuable) volume. So I’m delighted that publisher Ron Drummond and designer John Berry have joined up again in a new project on my behalf — a splendid new edition of Little, Big on its 25th anniversary. The project has my full and enthusiastic support, and I will be working with them on every aspect of the publication. What a treat! I hope you will think so too.
The publishers’ site explains:
John Crowley’s beloved novel Little, Big is without doubt among the greatest works of the imagination created during the last century. In publishing a deluxe, 25th Anniversary Edition of this masterpiece, our goal is twofold: First, we want to fulfill the author’s dream of how the book should be presented, by creating an edition that in every respect, from beauty of design to accuracy of text to excellence of manufacture, will reflect all the artistry, insight, imagination, and care that John Crowley poured into every sentence of Little, Big. And second, we want to create an edition that fans of the book will cherish, an edition that is a joy to behold and to read, an edition made to last several lifetimes.
Production began in 2006. Over the next three years, Harold Bloom wrote a long essay that serves as the book’s afterword, and Crowley wrote a short story that would appear only in the most limited editions of the book. In October of 2010, Drummond wrote, “I am happy to say that, production-wise, we are on the home stretch at last.” But he may have spoken a bit too soon.
Over the next decade, Drummond posted regular updates—at least one a year—but the project was clearly moving slowly. His posts outline, in intense detail, the level of specificity that went into the book. It is clear in every post that it’s a labor of love, but one that took an incredibly long time.
In a 2021 post called “Midnight in Montreal,” Drummond laid out some of the reasons for the delay, and how he involved Gaiman in the project. “By the time I made my way north from Lansingburgh to Montreal in August 2009, the Little, Big Project had been in trouble for over a year,” he wrote. The printer he had planned to use—and to whom he had given a deposit—was closing. The money was lost. Drummond and designer John D. Barry took another look at the book’s design, and the use of Milton’s art, and then spent years on a new design and layout that Drummond described as “not a quasi-graphic novel, but an interweaving of three modes or species of story that could be read as self-contained strands or in pairs or all three with great and potent play between them.”
But in that fateful summer of 2009, Drummond went to a convention in Montreal and enlisted Gaiman’s help:
We stepped a not-yet-codified minimum social distance away from the table and talked. Good news, Bloom’s essay and Crowley’s original short story, Milton’s amazing art and his enthusiasm for what we were doing with it. And the not so good, the printer bankruptcy, the shortfall, the longer lead time due to the more in-depth and careful design work. Details about our process and prospects. At the end, he grinned and said, Rest easy, Ron. I promise we’ll take care of John Crowley and Little, Big.
Drummond noted that along with Gaiman, two other people offered “significant financial assistance” getting the project over the finish line: author and historian Erik Davis, and a contributor he named only as “Jim.” In September of 2021, the month of the book’s 40th anniversary, the new edition officially went into print production.
And now, it’s a real book—one that some very patient readers may have in their hands. Among those readers is Gaiman, who posted an unboxing video, writing, “It was, I would hazard, worth waiting the extra 15 years for.”
However, given the long, long time between inception and completion, Drummond and his team are trying to confirm the address of everyone who ordered a book since 2004. Understandably, they don’t want to send this limited-edition object and passion project to old addresses. If you’re one of those who pre-ordered the book, you can update your address here. (Numbered and lettered editions are not yet shipping.)
Trade editions of the now-40th anniversary edition of Little, Big are still available through Deep Vellum, which is distributing the final product.
