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My Present Richard Adams Literary Adventure
5 years ago
These are strange times yet wonderful things still happen and you never know when a post in a facebook group will lead you on a literary adventure that will change the way you see one of your favorite authors.
Most will know the name Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, Shardik and The Plague Dogs to name but a few. He died four years ago and the family waited a year before they decided to sell his vast book collection. They took their time going through it all to separate the ones of value to the family and those are now housed at the Bodleian Law Library at Oxford. The rest they entrusted an auction company to appraise and sell to the public.
It was an immense task, they proceeded carefully and the family was consulted along the way. The auction commenced in mid December and was well attended by people from all over the world. I wish I could have gone. Especially when you hear the rest.
A member of the 'Watership Down Fans' public Facebook group attended the auction, an amateur book collector and a big fan of the author but he had little money to spend. Others loved the author too and opened up their wallets for just about anything that had Adams's name on it or book plate inside so our collector ended up buying the remainders from bins after the auction.
Well, never judge a book by its cover. When this fellow got home with dozens of books deemed of least value he began to find inclusions - bookmarks, inscriptions, postcards, margin notes inside each one that escaped the auction. Among them he found what would turn out to be the first criticism of the book Watership Down by a trusted friend when it was still titled "Hazel and Fiver", a water-damaged post card album where the auctioneers only looked at the picture sides missing the backs bearing love letters to his wife-to-be from places he was stationed in WWII. The album was said to have given its life to save the post cards which were in perfect condition.
Other books had notes written in the margins of nearly every page and these turned out to be the single supplied copies of several books Mr. Adams had been hired to edit the UK editions of and write the introductions to, the notes for which were all found inside. Amazing stuff. Mind blown.
He posted these treasures on the Facebook group and I was one of a few people blown away by each and every posting, most people in the group share their personal or commissioned rabbit art, polls of 'who is your favorite character', personal stories of how the book affected them and of course no end of random pictures of rabbits to caption then these treasures start showing up.
I vowed to help figure out the identity of the person Alan Barrett, who gave the frank criticism of Watership Down, I asked literary agents, booksellers and eventually found a company that turned out to be run by the two daughters of Mr, Adams himself, Juliet and Rosamond, the ones the story was made up for to entertain them as children on long car trips. And Juliet in one conversation identified the man in detail and hinted that the notes of criticisms had never been displayed to the public.
And the early critic turned out to be a friend of his from college at Oxford who studied Greek literature and he was the one responsible for the Greek sayings that preceded chapters in several of Adams's books, including Watership Down despite his earliest known review of it seen here.
[ https://sta.sh/05v7dpebdvz ] you will see he was very critical of it. Now it is unknown how complete the copy was that Alan Barrett based these on but I am glad the author dismissed it as his not really liking fantasy. They remained close friends and he was thanked in other books he contributed to later.
For my assistance I have been allowed to read Adams's own copy of the book "A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" which I need to read anyway, it has been called a modern day Walden. So now I shall read it but with Adams's margin notes for the British version and introduction. I will try not to get used to that.
If you would like to see the books and all they contain just check out the Watership Down Fans public group, there is a private group with the same name but these are only on the public group and posted by a man named Martin Reilly. Enjoy.
Most will know the name Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, Shardik and The Plague Dogs to name but a few. He died four years ago and the family waited a year before they decided to sell his vast book collection. They took their time going through it all to separate the ones of value to the family and those are now housed at the Bodleian Law Library at Oxford. The rest they entrusted an auction company to appraise and sell to the public.
It was an immense task, they proceeded carefully and the family was consulted along the way. The auction commenced in mid December and was well attended by people from all over the world. I wish I could have gone. Especially when you hear the rest.
A member of the 'Watership Down Fans' public Facebook group attended the auction, an amateur book collector and a big fan of the author but he had little money to spend. Others loved the author too and opened up their wallets for just about anything that had Adams's name on it or book plate inside so our collector ended up buying the remainders from bins after the auction.
Well, never judge a book by its cover. When this fellow got home with dozens of books deemed of least value he began to find inclusions - bookmarks, inscriptions, postcards, margin notes inside each one that escaped the auction. Among them he found what would turn out to be the first criticism of the book Watership Down by a trusted friend when it was still titled "Hazel and Fiver", a water-damaged post card album where the auctioneers only looked at the picture sides missing the backs bearing love letters to his wife-to-be from places he was stationed in WWII. The album was said to have given its life to save the post cards which were in perfect condition.
Other books had notes written in the margins of nearly every page and these turned out to be the single supplied copies of several books Mr. Adams had been hired to edit the UK editions of and write the introductions to, the notes for which were all found inside. Amazing stuff. Mind blown.
He posted these treasures on the Facebook group and I was one of a few people blown away by each and every posting, most people in the group share their personal or commissioned rabbit art, polls of 'who is your favorite character', personal stories of how the book affected them and of course no end of random pictures of rabbits to caption then these treasures start showing up.
I vowed to help figure out the identity of the person Alan Barrett, who gave the frank criticism of Watership Down, I asked literary agents, booksellers and eventually found a company that turned out to be run by the two daughters of Mr, Adams himself, Juliet and Rosamond, the ones the story was made up for to entertain them as children on long car trips. And Juliet in one conversation identified the man in detail and hinted that the notes of criticisms had never been displayed to the public.
And the early critic turned out to be a friend of his from college at Oxford who studied Greek literature and he was the one responsible for the Greek sayings that preceded chapters in several of Adams's books, including Watership Down despite his earliest known review of it seen here.
[ https://sta.sh/05v7dpebdvz ] you will see he was very critical of it. Now it is unknown how complete the copy was that Alan Barrett based these on but I am glad the author dismissed it as his not really liking fantasy. They remained close friends and he was thanked in other books he contributed to later.
For my assistance I have been allowed to read Adams's own copy of the book "A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" which I need to read anyway, it has been called a modern day Walden. So now I shall read it but with Adams's margin notes for the British version and introduction. I will try not to get used to that.
If you would like to see the books and all they contain just check out the Watership Down Fans public group, there is a private group with the same name but these are only on the public group and posted by a man named Martin Reilly. Enjoy.
