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ISBN: 9780963363763
The 40th anniversary NUMBERED edition. The trade edition can be purchased here.
Numbered and signed by John Crowley, artist Peter Milton, and the late Harold Bloom.
The author's preferred text, featuring the extraordinary art of Peter Milton. The Numbered Edition includes a never-before-published short story by John Crowley, a bridge between Little, Big and his 2017 novel Ka, that is not included in the Trade Edition; plus a longer, more extensive version of Harold Bloom's previously unpublished essay.
This edition has a green cloth cover with gold embossed title, an exclusive dustjacket featuring an original essay by author Catherynne M. Valente, and is housed in a sturdy slipcase featuring new artwork by Peter Milton.
Mohawk Superfine acid-free paper, full cloth, sewn bindings, dustjacket, slipcase, 820 pp. $750
[Very limited stock available. If any copies remain in 2025, expect the price to increase.]
Originally planned as just 300 Numbered copies, which all pre-sold by 2009. Since that time, every aspect of production greatly intensified and this edition is now longer and much more lavishly illustrated than what was originally advertised to buyers, and its value has nearly tripled. For years we fielded regular requests for additional copies. As Fay would have it, extra sheets were signed by the author, the artist, and Harold Bloom before be passed in 2019. When production finally commenced in late 2021, we were able to have these bound into books and thereby increased the Numbered edition from 300 to a total count of 365.
This unparalleled edition is sure to sell out again soon, so don't pass up your chance to invest in a copy of this gorgeous literary artifact made to last for generations.
Note to collectors: The numbering & signatures are to be found at the back of the book, not the front.
It's one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. It exists at the intersection of Literature and the Fantastic. The beautiful long-awaited 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big is coming out in time for the 40th Anniversary. The publishing event of the decade is happening.
— Neil Gaiman, 15 September 2021
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, 40th Anniversary Edition of this masterpiece, our goal was twofold: First, we wanted 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, would reflect all the artistry, insight, imagination, and care that John Crowley poured into every sentence of Little, Big. And second, we wanted to create an edition that fans of the book would cherish, an edition that will be a joy to behold and to read, an edition made to last several lifetimes.
The interior design of the first edition of Little, Big, published by Bantam Books in 1981 (and duplicated in the current HarperCollins edition), is certainly quite striking. Yet its sensibility is late Victorian, whereas Crowley’s design conception for the book has always been art nouveau. Incunabula has brought together the production team of editor Ron Drummond and book designer John D. Berry to create, in close consultation with John Crowley, that ideal edition of Little, Big.
It’s an ideal that very much includes art. The 40th Anniversary Edition features superb reproductions of over three hundred details from the drawings, etchings, engravings, and prints of Peter Milton, an artist whom John Crowley felt to be ideally suited to Little, Big. With loving care, we have interwoven Crowley’s words with Milton’s images to create a tapestry full of subtle and surprising resonances, a uniquely revealing concatenation of the work of two modern masters.
The finishing touch comes with a long, ruminative Afterword to Little, Big written especially for the edition by one of the novel’s greatest admirers, Harold Bloom, the late Yale humanities professor and bestselling author of The Western Canon and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.
Of course, such an embarrassment of riches deserves nothing less than the finest book manufacturing that money can buy. We are confident we have provided just that. The 40th Anniversary Edition exemplifies the highest standards of book production, with acid-free papers, cloths, and sewn bindings.
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