Little, Big

Little, Big
Cover of first edition (Bantam Books, paperback)
Author(s)	John Crowley
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fantasy
Publisher	Bantam Books
Publication date	August 1981
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	538 pp
ISBN	0-553-01266-5
OCLC Number	7596266
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Classification	PS3553.R597 L5

Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament is a modern fantasy novel by John Crowley, published in 1981. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1982.

Plot synopsis

Little, Big is the epic story of the Drinkwater family and their relationship with the mostly obscured world of Faery. It is set in and around their eccentric country house, called Edgewood, in New England somewhere north of "the City" (clearly a version of New York City). The story is dreamlike, quiet, and meandering, spanning a hundred years of the intertwined family trees of the Drinkwaters and their relations—from the turn of the twentieth century to a sparsely-described dystopian future America ruled by a sinister despot. The magical elements are subtle rather than overt, with only occasional glimpses of the fairies themselves, although their presence is felt throughout.

Characters

• Smoky Barnable
• Daily Alice Drinkwater
• Auberon Barnable
• Sylvie
• Sophie Drinkwater
• Violet Bramble
• Aunt Cloud
• John Drinkwater
• Auberon Drinkwater
• Grandfather Trout (August Drinkwater)
• George Mouse
• Ariel Hawksquill
• Russell Eigenblick (Frederick Barbarossa)

Major themes

One of the recurring motifs in the work is the sense of the disparity between the insides and the outsides of things; that is, how large insides somehow fit into small outsides. The Edgewood house is certainly the most obvious of these. The memory palaces of Ariel Hawksquill also point to the inside-outside, little-big motif.

Crowley has mentioned some of the main elements that came together to form this work. One of these is the image of Smoky tying up the ends of his life to go to his uncertain future at the Drinkwater house. Another is the idea of a huge multi-generational family and their intimate ties with faerie.

One other recurring theme is the idea of generation, in this case, human procreation. This theme is illustrated by both the sheer size of the Drinkwater clan and the constant emphasis on family life. A thread of incest also becomes apparent when George Mouse sleeps with his second cousin Sophie Drinkwater. Though never stated flatly, there is heavy implication that George Mouse is Sylvie's father, in addition to being her one-time lover.

Seasons affect the mood of the book throughout. Auberon tries to relive, and forget, his life with Sylvie by remembering the seasons. The whole book has the feel of going through the seasons. It starts in the Spring, then moves onto Summer where everyone is happy and has few worries. There is a story about a mouse that doesn't know what winter is, and, metaphorically, the characters are not prepared for Winter, either. Then the feel gets slowly darker as Auberon loses himself to alcohol in the story's Winter. In the end, Spring is swept back in.

Literary significance

Harold Bloom included this work in his book The Western Canon, calling it "A neglected masterpiece. The closest achievement we have to the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll."

Literary and artistic allusions

2002 Harper paperback edition cover

The writing has its roots in poetry and American idiom and blossoms into hints and wordplay. Those who like the book praise its style, while others find it overdecorated. Indeed it is a highly decorated book, broken into short sections that each have a title, full of catchphrases and of allusions to such things as:

• Louis Comfort Tiffany
• Samuel Purchas
• Sufi Poet Farid al-Din Attar; particularly The Conference of the Birds
• Frances Yates' studies of Renaissance neoplatonism
• Lewis Carroll
• William Shakespeare
• tarot divination
• Illustrations of Arthur Rackham
• Harlem
• Thornton Burgess's children's stories
• Frederick Barbarossa, the King in the mountain
• Cottingley Fairies

Editions of the book usually have some ornamentation in the printing.

Awards and nominations

• Winner of the World Fantasy Award, 1982.
• Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, 1981.
• Nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1982.
• Nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award, 1982.
• Nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, 1982.

Release details

• 1981, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-01266-5, Pub date Sep 1981, trade paperback (black). Simultaneously published in Canada.
• 1982, UK, Victor Gollancz, ISBN 0-575-03065-8, Pub date May 1982, hardcover (white dustjacket)
• 1982, UK, Victor Gollancz, ISBN 0-575-03123-9, Pub date May 1982, trade paperback (white)
• 1983, UK, Methuen, ISBN 0-413-51350-5, Pub date 1983, mass market paperback.
• 1983, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-23337-8, Pub date Oct 1983, mass market paperback. Yvonne Gilbert (front cover illustrator)
• 1986, UK, Methuen, ISBN 0-413-51350-5, Pub date Nov 1986, mass market paperback.
• 1987, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-26586-5, Pub date Apr 1987, mass market paperback.
• 1990, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-26586-5, Pub date Nov 1990, mass market paperback. Tom Canty (front cover illustrator)
• 1994, USA, Bantam, ISBN 0-553-37397-8, Pub date Sep 1994, hardcover. Gary A. Lippincott (illustrator)
• 1997, USA, Easton Press Masterpieces of Fantasy, hardcover.
• 1997, USA, Bantam /Science Fiction Book Club, ISBN 1-56865-429-4, Pub date Aug 1997, hardcover. Gary A. Lippincott (illustrator)
• 2000, UK, Orion Books, ISBN 1-85798-711-X, Pub date May 2000, trade paperback, volume 5 of the Fantasy Masterworks series
• 2002, USA, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-093793-9, Pub date Mar 2002, trade paperback.
• 2006, USA, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, ISBN 0-06-112005-7, Pub date Oct 2006, trade paperback.
• 2011, USA, Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9781441733924 (CD) and ISBN 9781441733955 (MP3-CD), Pub date 15 Dec 2011, audiobook. Read by the author.

A 25th anniversary edition, designed in accordance with the author's idea of how the book should be presented, is now in production at Incunabula, a small press in Seattle. It is however, uncertain, if or when it will be published. This limited edition would include reproductions of the artwork of Peter Milton, and an afterword by Harold Bloom.

External links

• Little, Big at Worlds Without End
• Little, Big publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database