Richard Adams

Richard George Adams (born May 9, 1920) is an English novelist who is best known as the writer of three novels featuring animal characters, in particular Watership Down and to a lesser extent Shardik and The Plague Dogs.

Life and work

"Watership Down" paperback cover 1996

Adams was born in Newbury, Berkshire. He served in the British Army from 1940 until 1946, during World War II. He was given a Class B discharge to continue his studies and in 1948 he received a master's degree from Worcester College at Oxford University. He was a senior civil servant who worked as an Assistant Secretary for the Department of Agriculture, later part of the Department of the Environment, from 1948 to 1974. Since 1974, following publication of his second novel, Shardik, he has been a full-time author.

He originally began telling the story of Watership Down to his two daughters, Juliet and Rosamund, and they insisted he publish it as a book. It took two years to write and was rejected by thirteen publishers. When Watership Down was finally published, it sold over a million copies in record time in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Watership Down has become a modern classic and won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction in 1972. To date, Adams' best-known work has sold over 50 million copies world-wide, earning him more than all his other books put together.

As of 1982, he was President of the RSPCA.

He also contested the 1983 general election, standing as an Independent Conservative in the Spelthorne constituency on a platform of opposition to fox hunting.

He now lives, with his wife, Elizabeth, within 10 miles of his birthplace.

Books

• Watership Down (1972) ISBN 9780743277709
• Beklan Empire
  • Shardik (1974) ISBN 9780380005161
  • Maia (1984) ISBN 978-0-517-62993-2
• Nature Through the Seasons (1975) ISBN 9780722650073
• The Tyger Voyage (1976) ISBN 9780394407968
• The Plague Dogs (1977) ISBN 9780345494023
• The Adventures & Brave Deeds Of The Ship's Cat On The Spanish Maine: Together With The Most Lamentable Losse Of The Alcestis & Triumphant Firing Of The Port Of Chagres (1977) (also published as The Ship's Cat) ISBN 9780224014410
• Nature Day and Night (1978) ISBN 072265359X (with Max Hooper)
• The Girl in a Swing (1980) ISBN 978-0-7139-1407-8
• The Iron Wolf and Other Stories (1980, published in the USA as The Unbroken Web) ISBN 978-0-517-40375-4
• The Phoenix Tree (1980, a collection by various authors, includes "The Story of El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit of Inle" from Watership Down) ISBN 9780380763801
• The Legend of Te Tuna (1982) ISBN 9780283993930
• Voyage Through the Antarctic (1982; with Ronald Lockley), Allen Lane ISBN 0713913967
• A Nature Diary (1985) ISBN 0-670-80105-4 / 978-0-670-80105-3
• Traveller (1988) ISBN 978-0-394-57055-6
• The Day Gone By (autobiography) (1990) ISBN 9780679401179
• Tales from Watership Down (collection of linked stories) (1996) ISBN 9780380729340
• The Outlandish Knight (1999) ISBN 9780727870339
• Daniel (2006) ISBN 1-903110-37-8

External links

• Richard Adams at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Richard Adams at the Internet Book List
• Richard Adams at the Internet Book Database of Fiction
• Richard Adams At Eighty
• 1985 interview with Richard Adams by Don Swaim at Wired for Books
• Wrecking Ball Press publishers of 'Daniel'

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