Watership Down

Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in south-central England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language (Lapine), proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel is the Aeneid of the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.

Watership Down was Richard Adams' first novel and it is by far his most successful to date. Although it was rejected by 13 publishers before Collings accepted it, Watership Down has never been out of print, and it is Penguin Books' best-selling novel of all time. It won the annual Carnegie Medal, annual Guardian Prize, and other book awards (below). It has been adapted as a 1978 animated film that is now a classic and as a 1999 to 2001 television series.

Adams completed a sequel almost 25 years later, Tales from Watership Down (Random House, 1996; Hutchinson and Alfred A. Knopf imprints). It is a collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren, with "Notes on Pronunciation" and "Lapine Glossary".