Watership Down

For the real-life location, see Watership Down, Hampshire.
For other uses, see Watership Down (disambiguation).

Watership Down
First edition cover
AuthorRichard Adams
LanguageEnglish, Lapine
GenreFantasy
PublisherRex Collings
Publication date
November 1972
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardback, paperback & audiobook)
Pages413 (first edition) plus maps[1]
AwardsCarnegie Medal (literary award)

Guardian Children's Fiction Prize

California Young Reader Medal
ISBN0-901720-31-3
OCLC633254
823/.9/14
LC ClassPZ10.3.A197 Wat[2][3]
Followed byTales from Watership Down 

Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in Hampshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel 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 debut novel. It was rejected by several publishers before Collings accepted the manuscript;[4] the published book then won the annual Carnegie Medal (UK), annual Guardian Prize (UK), and other book awards. The novel was adapted into an animated feature film in 1978 and, from 1999 to 2001, an animated children's television series.[5][6] In 2018, a drama of the story was made, which both aired in the UK and was made available on Netflix.

Adams completed a sequel almost 25 years later, in 1996, Tales from Watership Down,[a] constructed as a collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.[7][8][9]

  1. ^ "Watership Down" (library catalog record for a copy of the first edition). WorldCat. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  2. ^ "Watership Down (by) Richard Adams". Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 31 July 2012.
  3. ^ "Watership Down (by) Richardo Adams" (first U.S. edition). LCC record. Retrieved 31 July 2012.
  4. ^ Richard Adams: Forever animated by the life of animals. The Independent (online). Retrieved 23 December 2012.
  5. ^ Rateliff, John D. "Classics of Fantasy". Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Archived from the original on 28 December 2008. Retrieved 21 March 2008.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBC was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Tales from Watership Down (first edition) publication contents at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 8 September 2012.
  8. ^ Tales from Watership Down at the Internet Book List
  9. ^ Sally Eckhoff (26 November 1996). "Tales from Watership Down". Salon. Archived from the original on 7 December 2007. Retrieved 15 March 2008.


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