Watership Down

A few years back, I sent a paperback copy of Watership Down to a female pen pal serving a life sentence. I don’t think she read it, although she said she did, but as I inevitably learned, she lied about pretty much everything. But what do you expect from an habitual criminal, right? There I go again, thinking I can save the world. Anyway, it was an enlightening disappointment when she requested true crime stories instead. 

On the other hand, Watership Down is a heart-warming and absorbing adventure story. That is, if you pay attention. Watership Down is a novel by English author Richard Adams, published in 1972. The setting is in Hampshire in southern England and features a small group of anthropomorphised rabbits. Through the magic of Adams’ prose, the reader is introduced to their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. It’s really great fun and quite entertaining. 

Evoking epic themes, the storyline follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home (the hill of Watership Down), encountering perils and temptations along the way. Watership Down was Richard Adams's first novel. It was rejected by several publishers before Rex Collings accepted the manuscript; the published book then won the annual Carnegie Medal (UK), annual Guardian Prize (UK), and several other book awards. Adams completed a sequel almost 25 years later, in 1996, Tales from Watership Down, constructed as a collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.

Origin and publication history

"To Juliet and Rosamund, remembering the road to Stratford-on-Avon"

-- Dedication, Watership Down.

 

"Master Rabbit I saw"

-- Walter de la Mare — Line quoted in Watership Down.

The story began as tales that Richard Adams told his young daughters Juliet and Rosamund during long car journeys. He recounted in 2007 that he "began telling the story of the rabbits ... improvised off the top of [his] head, as [they] were driving along". The daughters insisted he write it down —"they were very, very persistent". After some delay, Adams began writing the novel in the evenings; he completed it 18 months later. The book is dedicated to the two girls.

Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behavior were based on The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), by British naturalist Ronald Lockley. The two later became friends, embarking on an Antarctic tour that became the subject of a co-authored book, Voyage Through the Antarctic (A. Lane, 1982).

In his autobiography, The Day Gone By, Adams wrote that he based Watership Down and the stories in it on his experiences during Operation Market Garden, the Battle of Arnhem, in 1944. The character of Hazel, the leader of the group of rabbits, was modeled on Adams's commanding officer, Major John Gifford. He gave the warrior Bigwig the personality of Captain Desmond Kavanagh, who is buried at the Airborne Cemetery in Oosterbeek, The Netherlands.

Watership Down was rejected seven times before it was accepted by Rex Collings. The one-man London publisher Collings wrote to an associate, "I've just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I'm mad?" The associate called it "a mad risk" in her obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive." Collings had little capital and could not pay an advance but "he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered." Adams wrote that it was Collings who gave Watership Down its title. A second edition was released in 1973.