Books by Richard Adams That Are Not By The Author of Watership Down

Recently I finished a checklist of the writings of Richard Adams (1920-2016), the author of Watership Down and many other books. My checklist accounts for the first editions of his books, short stories, juvenilia, nonfiction, and a selection of interviews with him. I was surprised no one had done such a thing before. It will appear in a volume Watership Down: From Animal Fantasy to Ecological Reality, edited by Catherine Butler and Dimitra Fimi, to be published in 2025 by the University Press of Mississippi. 

The process involved disambiguating the publications of other people named Richard Adams from those by the author of Watership Down. Some books have been attributed to him and are demonstrably not by him; yet they appear in various usually-credible bibliographies. 

The most persistent example is the slim anthology Sinister and Supernatural Stories (Ward Lock Educational, 1976). It contains seven stories, one, "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier, and one, "Poor Ash," an original by Richard Adams, who also contributed a two page introduction. There is no biographical information on Adams in the book. The fantasist Richard Adams did anthologies, like  Richard Adams’s Favourite Animal Stories (1981), which included one tale ("The Rabbit's Ghost Story") by Adams, making for a similar situation with the earlier anthology. Research showed that this Richard Adams did other books around the same time for the same and other publishers. A second slim anthology Stories of Adolescence (1979) was edited by this Richard Adams, and likewise contains an original story titled "Dead End." 

Yet another volume edited by this Richard Adams is a collection The Birds and Other Stories (Longman, 1980), by Daphne du Maurier, which includes five stories ("The Birds" having appeared in Sinister and Supernatural Stories) and a new Foreword by du Maurier, and an Editor's Introduction by Adams. This time, however, the title page credits Richard Adams as "Head of the Sixth Form, Lord Williams's School, Thame." Other books edited by Adams in this Longman series include The Valley of Fear (1980) by Arthur Conan Doyle; Typhoon and Other Stories (1980) by Joseph Conrad.

This Richard Adams also was the series editor at Longman Study Texts for some Shakespeare plays, and ones by other authors. I note here just one, Romeo and Juliet, which was edited by Paul Cheetham, of the English Department, Lord Williams's School; so this Richard Adams didn't need to look far to hire an editor. A query to Lord Williams's School about this Richard Adams did not receive a reply. 

Yet with considerable digging, I have ascertained that this Richard [M.] Adams was born near London in 1938. He attended the Orange Hill Boys Grammar School, and St. Catherine's College, Oxford (B.A. 1961; B.Litt 1965). He taught for some years at St. Catherine's, and subsequently as an English teacher at Lord Williams's School. He wrote several school and academic textbooks, including Into Shakespeare (1977), Appropriate English (1984), and Teaching Shakespeare (1985), and a study of Iris Murdoch's The Bells (1990). as well as a Penguin Critical Studies edition on Conrad's The Heart of Darkness (1991), among others. A keen concert and festival attendee, he also published A Book of British Music Festivals (1986; see below for flap bio). In 1986 he became Professor of English Language and Literature at California State University in Sacramento, and later Adjunct Professor, English Literature, at Ramkhamhaeng University in Thailand. He is currently retired and lives in Bangkok. 

 Richard Adams (b. 1938) flap bio 1986

 

There is another Richard Adams (b. 1940) who, in the 1970s and 80s, wrote on Christian subjects, So God Said to Me ... (1978), Dear God--Dear George (1980), Seen God Lately?(1982), Signs of Life (1985), and Visions and Voices (1988). 

Ul de Rico (1944-2023)

I just learned that the painter, illustrator and writer known as Ul de Rico (his full name was Ulderico Conte Gropplero di Troppenburg) passed away on 3 August 2023, a bit over a year ago, aged 79. I've written about him before, and here is the link.  

The Rainbow Goblins has been a favorite of mine since I first discovered it not long after U.S. publication in 1978. His family's announcement of his death notes that it came after years of suffering endured with admirable bravery. Perhaps that explains why The White Goblin (1996) was his last book.

His passing seems to have had no notice in English-language publications. Some of his art can be seen here. Note the short biography at the very bottom of that webpage.

Who Was "Mr Rang" in Tolkien's Letters?

In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), there is about eight pages worth of text comprising "Drafts for a letter to 'Mr Rang'" (Letter no. 297, pp. 379-387). I never knew there was any mystery about the identity of Mr. Rang until my friend Jessica Yates just sent me a draft of her short piece on this topic (now published here). My research of some ten years ago identified a different person. With Jessica's permission, I present my findings here. 

According to the Humphrey Carpenter's headnote to the letter, Tolkien had written at the top: "Some reflections in preparing an answer to a letter from one Mr Rang about investigation into my nomenclature. In the event only a brief (and therefore rather severe) reply was sent, but I retain these notes". Tolkien had added the date of August 1967. 

I have long believed that this Mr. Rang was Jack C. Rang, who delivered a talk "Two Servants" (on Niggle and Sam Gamgee) at the Tolkien Symposium at Mankato, Minnesota (somewhat south and west of Minneapolis) on 28-29 October 1966. This talk was subsequently published in February 1967 in "The Tolkien Papers", an issue of Mankato Studies in English.  Here we have a Mr. Rang who showed considerable interest in Tolkien in 1966, the year before Tolkien dated his notes in reply to a letter from a Mr. Rang. It has always seemed to me likely that these two Rangs were one and the same person.

Jack Charles Rang was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 27 September 1923. He was the only child of Carl John Rang (1890-1944), a bank cashier, and his wife Lena B. Willey (1888-1976). Jack died at the age of 87 in Centerville, Ohio, on 7 February 2011. On obituary in the Dayton News (11 February 2011) tells us that:

He served in the U.S. army during World War II and was a graduate of Northwestern University [B.S. 1948], receiving advanced degrees from Aquinas College [M.A. 1965] and Northwestern. Jack had a life-long love of the theatre and was involved in acting and directing many educational and community theatre productions. He was a radio and television personality and taught broadcasting courses, most recently at the University of Dayton, from which he retired in 1994 with the rank of Professor Emeritus.

Jack C. Rang had married in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1948, and was survived by his wife, Mary Ruth Rang (b. 1927), and their son, daughter and grandson. 

If this isn't the Mr. Rang that Tolkien wrote to in 1967, it is undoubtedly the Jack C. Rang who presented on Tolkien at Mankato in 1966.

An Unexpected Sighting of One of My Books

So I started watching the Apple tv series The Changeling, based on the Victor Lavelle novel, and at the very beginning there is shown a shelf of books in a library in Queens. I always cue in to the titles of books when they show up as props in a film or in a series.  So imagine my surprise to see one of my own books, Tales Before Tolkien, in this shot from The Changeling.

Click on the photo to enlarge

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can recognize a few other titles, like Fiasco (which book of that title is unclear), A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connections,  The Other Islands of New York City, a Sidney Sheldon book (I can't discern the title), my book, and Tellers of Tales (presumably the W. Somerset Maugham book, and not the Roger Lancelyn Green one, which is not as thick as the former). If these titles, singly or in toto, are meant to foreshadow anything of the plot, it escapes me. But I enjoyed the diversion.

The Price per Word

In May 2024, a scrap of paper—a legitimate Tolkien manuscript—was auctioned at Doyle of New York. The piece of paper is 3 3/4 x 7 inches, and contains sixteen words, plus Tolkien's signature. The words are from a letter of 30 June 1972 that Tolkien sent to The Daily Telegraph, and which was duly published in their issue dated 4 July 1972.  Here is the item, as it appears on the Doyle auction website:

The price realized, with Buyer's Premium (but not including the sales tax), was $24,320, which considering the content to be sixteen words, comes to a price of $1,520 per word. Yikes.