Editing Watership Down (section)

==Reception==
''[[The Economist]]'' heralded the book's publication, saying "If there is no place for ''Watership Down'' in children's bookshops, then children's literature is dead."<ref name="economist">{{cite magazine | title = Pick of the Warren |magazine=The Economist | date = 23 December 1972 | page = 47 }}</ref> [[Peter S. Prescott|Peter Prescott]], senior book reviewer at ''[[Newsweek]]'', gave the novel a glowing review: "Adams handles his suspenseful narrative more dextrously than most authors who claim to write adventure novels, but his true achievement lies in the consistent, comprehensible and altogether enchanting civilisation that he has created."<ref name="newsweek-prescott" /> Kathleen J. Rothen and Beverly Langston identified the work as one that "subtly speaks to a child", with "engaging characters and fast-paced action [that] make it readable."<ref name="rothen" /> This echoed [[Nicholas Tucker]]'s praise for the story's suspense in the ''[[New Statesman]]'': "Adams{{nbsp}}... has bravely and successfully resurrected the big [[picaresque]] adventure story, with moments of such tension that the helplessly involved reader finds himself checking whether things are going to work out all right on the next page before daring to finish the preceding one."<ref name="newstatesman">{{cite journal | last = Tucker | first = Nicholas | author-link = Nicholas Tucker | title = Animal Epic | page = 950 |journal=New Statesman | date = 22 December 1972}}</ref>

[[D. Keith Mano]], a science fiction writer and conservative social commentator writing in the ''[[National Review]]'', declared that the novel was "pleasant enough, but it has about the same intellectual firepower as Dumbo." He pilloried it further: "''Watership Down'' is an adventure story, no more than that: rather a swashbuckling crude one to boot. There are virtuous rabbits and bad rabbits: if that's allegory, ''[[Bonanza]]'' is an allegory."<ref name="mano">{{cite journal | last = Mano | first = D. Keith | title = Banal Bunnies | journal = [[National Review]] | page = 406 | date = 26 April 1974}}</ref>

[[John Rowe Townsend]] notes that the book quickly achieved such a high popularity despite the fact that it "came out at a high price and in an unattractive jacket from a publisher who had hardly been heard of."<ref>{{cite book |title=Celebrating Children's Books: Essays on Children's Literature in Honor of Zena Sutherland |last=Townsend |first=John Rowe |editor1=Betsy Hearne |editor2=Marilyn Kaye |year=1981 |publisher=Lathrop, Lee, and Shepard Books |location=New York |isbn=0-688-00752-X |page=[https://archive.org/details/celebratingchild00suth/page/185 185] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/celebratingchild00suth/page/185 }}</ref> Fred Inglis, in his book ''The Promise of Happiness: Value and meaning in children's fiction'', praises the author's use of prose to express the strangeness of ordinary human inventions from the rabbits' perspective.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Promise of Happiness: Value and meaning in children's fiction |last=Inglis |first=Fred |year=1981 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-23142-6 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/promiseofhappine0000ingl/page/204 204–205] |url=https://archive.org/details/promiseofhappine0000ingl/page/204 }}</ref>

''Watership Down'''s universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have been identified with by readers from a diversity of backgrounds; the author [[Rachel Kadish]], reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto ''Watership Down'', has remarked "Turns out plenty of other people have seen their histories in that book{{nbsp}}... some people see it as an allegory for struggles against the Cold War, fascism, extremism{{nbsp}}... a protest against materialism, against the corporate state. ''Watership Down'' can be Ireland after the famine, Rwanda after the massacres." Kadish has praised both the fantasy genre and ''Watership Down'' for its "motifs [that] hit home in every culture{{nbsp}}... all passersby are welcome to bring their own subplots and plug into the archetype."<ref>{{cite news|author=Rachel Kadish|url=http://momentmag.com/moment/issues/2011/10/speakingvolumes.html|title=Whose Parable Is It Anyway?|work=Moment Magazine|date=September–October 2011|access-date=3 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111004081325/http://momentmag.com/moment/issues/2011/10/speakingvolumes.html|archive-date=4 October 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Awards===
Adams won the 1972 [[Carnegie Medal (literary award)|Carnegie Medal]] from the [[CILIP|Library Association]], recognising the year's best children's book by a [[British subject]].<ref name=medal1972/> He also won the annual [[Guardian Children's Fiction Prize]],<ref>{{cite web|title=British Children's Literature Awards: Guardian Children's Prize for Fiction |publisher=Burnaby Public Library |year=2007 |url=http://www.bpl.burnaby.bc.ca/gab/guardian.pdf |access-date=28 March 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071128210117/http://www.bpl.burnaby.bc.ca/gab/guardian.pdf |archive-date=28 November 2007 }}</ref> a similar award that authors may not win twice.<ref name=relaunch/><ref group=lower-alpha name=GCFP/> In 1977 California schoolchildren selected it for the inaugural [[California Young Reader Medal]] in the Young Adult category, which annually honours one book from the last four years.<!--only once per book--><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.californiayoungreadermedal.org/winners.htm|title=Winners|publisher=California Young Reader Medal|access-date=8 May 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110527103102/http://www.californiayoungreadermedal.org/winners.htm|archive-date=27 May 2011}}</ref> In [[The Big Read]], a 2003 survey of the British public, it was voted the forty-second greatest book of all time.<ref>{{cite web | title = The Big Read: Top 100 Books |publisher=BBC |date=April 2003 | url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml | access-date = 28 March 2008}}</ref>

===Criticism of gender roles===
The 1993 Puffin Modern Classics edition of the novel contains an [[afterword]] by [[Nicholas Tucker]], who wrote that stories such as ''Watership Down'' "now fit rather uneasily into the modern world of consideration of both sexes". He contrasted Hazel's sensitivity to Fiver with the "far more mechanical" attitude of the bucks towards the does portrayed as "little more than passive baby-factories".<ref name="pmc-tucker-afterword">[[Nicholas Tucker|Tucker, Nicholas]] (1993). "Afterword". In Richard Adams, ''Watership Down''. London: Puffin Modern Classics. {{ISBN|978-0-14-036453-8}}. In later printings of the same edition, however, this part of the afterword is excised.</ref>

In a 1974 ''New York Times Book Review'' essay "Male Chauvinist Rabbits", Selma G. Lanes alleges that the does are only "instruments of reproduction to save his male rabbits' triumph from becoming a hollow victory."<ref name="maleChauvinistRabbits">{{cite news |last=Lanes |first=Selma G. |title=Male Chauvinist Rabbits |newspaper=The New York Times |date=30 June 1974 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/30/archives/the-guest-word-male-chauvinist-rabbits.html |access-date=10 July 2016 }}</ref> Lanes argued that this view of female rabbits came from Adams rather than his source text, Ronald Lockley's ''The Private Life of the Rabbit'' in which the rabbit world is matriarchal, and new warrens are initiated by dissatisfied young females.<ref name="lanes-lookingglass-194">{{cite book | last = Lanes | first = Selma | title = Through the Looking Glass: Further Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature | publisher = David R. Godine | year = 2004}}, p. 198</ref>

In similar vein, literary critic Jane Resh Thomas said ''Watership Down'' "draws upon{{nbsp}}... an anti-feminist social tradition which, removed from the usual human context and imposed upon rabbits, is eerie in its clarity". Thomas also called it a "splendid story" in which "anti-feminist bias{{nbsp}}... damages the novel in only a minor way".<ref name="resh-thomas">{{cite journal | last = Resh Thomas | first = Jane | title = Old Worlds and New: Anti-Feminism in Watership Down | journal = [[Horn Book Magazine|The Horn Book]] | date = 4 August 1974 | volume = L | issue = 4 | pages = 405–08}}</ref>

Adams's 1996 sequel, ''[[Tales from Watership Down]]'' includes stories where the female rabbits play a more prominent role in the Watership Down warren.<ref name="biersdorfer">{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505EEDE113DF932A35751C1A960958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink |title=Books in Brief: Fiction |date=1 December 1996 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |author=J. D. Biersdorfer }}</ref>

=== Ownership controversy ===
On 27 May 2020, the high court in London ruled that [[Martin Rosen (director)|Martin Rosen]], the director of the 1978 film adaptation, had wrongly claimed that he owned all rights to the book, as well as terminating his contract for rights to the film. Rosen had entered into adaptation contracts worth more than $500,000 (£400,000), including licences for an audiobook adaptation and the 2018 television adaptation.

In his ruling, Judge Richard Hacon ordered Rosen to pay over $100,000 in damages for copyright infringement, unauthorised licence deals, and denying royalty payments to the Adams estate. Rosen was also directed to provide a record of all licence agreements involving ''Watership Down'', and pay court costs and the Adams estate's legal fees totalling £28,000.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://deadline.com/2020/06/richard-adams-estate-wins-back-rights-to-watership-down-in-english-high-court-case-1202948220|title = Richard Adams Estate Wins Back Rights to 'Watership Down' in English High Court Case|date = 2 June 2020}}</ref>