Watership Down

By Richard Adams

First illustrated edition, first impression: Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd and Kestrel Books, 1976. Signed and inscribed by the author on the verso of the half-title: "To Dinah Wiener / with warm good wishes from / Richard Adams / 19th September, 1977".

Original quarter brown cloth over cream boards, the spine ruled in gilt and lettered in black with a black-stamped vignette; mustard endpapers and pastedowns. With the original pictorial dust jacket after John Lawrence, unclipped and priced £8.75 net to the front flap, and the original pictorial slipcase.

A fine copy: the binding and contents clean and fresh and free from any marks or inscriptions.

The dust jacket near fine, with a tear to the bottom right corner of the upper panel and some toning to the verso of the spine panel. The slipcase near fine, with an area of darkening to the bottom edge.

Adams's first novel was published by Rex Collings in November 1972, after seven rejections, and won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. This is the first illustrated edition, issued by Kestrel four years later with drawings and watercolours by John Lawrence, who, as the jacket records, worked from sketching trips in the country of the novel. Martin Rosen's animated adaptation followed in 1978, the year after the present copy was inscribed.