ADAMS, Richard (1920- ), children's writer and

novelist, born in Berkshire. He is most widely

known for his highly successful fantasy Watership

Down (1972), an anthropomorphic account of rabbit

society, and has also written other works including

Shardik (1974) and Plague Dogs (1977).

ADAMS, Sarah Flower (1805-48), poet, born in Essex,

the daughter of a radical journalist, Benjamin Flower,

and brought up as a Unitarian: after her father's death

in 1829 she lived for some years in the family circle of

W. J. *Fox, to whose Monthly Repository she contrib-

uted. She wrote a historical verse drama about mar-

tyrdom, Vivia Perpetua (1841), but is remembered as a

writer of *hymns, which include 'Nearer, my God, to

Thee' (c.1834).

adaptation, stage, film, and TV. It was the develop

ment of the cinema that made adaptation a common-

place. The early pioneers of film simply trained their

cameras on the stage, producing drastically condensed

versions or highlights of classic plays. The first film

stars were the leading theatrical performers of the day.

Shakespeare was a favourite. In 1899 Beerbohm *Tree

made a short film of * King John, and the following year

Sarah *Bernhardt starred in a three-minute *Hamlet.

Most of the acknowledged landmarks in the early

cinema had literary origins. Edwin S.Porter's The Great

Train Robbery (1903) was based on a stage melodrama

that had been performed in New York in 1896. D. W.

Griffith's The Birth of a Nation ( 1915) was adapted from

The Clansman (1905), a stage play (originally a novel)

by Thomas Dixon, in which Griffith had appeared as an

actor in 1906. Griffith was credited with creating the

language of cinema, but cited the i9th-cent. novel —in

particular *Dickens—as his major influence.

With the coming of sound, plays and novels could be

reproduced with greater fidelity, but for the best film-

makers were less vehicles of adaptation than points of

departure. 'What I do is to read a story once,' com-

mented Alfred Hitchcock, 'and, if I like the basic idea, I

just forget all about the book and start to create

cinema.'

The tension between literature and film was at its

most acute in the adaptations of the classics. In a

review of William Wyler's 1939 version of * Wuthering

Heights the critic Dilys Powell regretted a cinema 'still

beset by people who bring the book with them'. Wyler

achieved a polished piece of Hollywood film-making

within the constraints of the two-hour feature, but was

still criticized for omitting half of the Brontë original.

The advent of television, with the extra scope

provided by weekly episodes, offered a more natural

medium for faithful adaptation. From *The Forsyte

Saga (1967) to such lavish productions as *Middle-

march, * Pride and Prejudice, and * Vanity Fair in the

1990s, Britain's strong literary tradition produced in

the classic serial an enduring commodity.

As the appeal of adaptation lay in the commercial

value of exploiting an established property, it was

perhaps inevitable that, by the end of the 20th cent., the

theatre should have turned back to the cinema. Long-

running musicals were based on the films Sunset

Boulevard (1950; Billy Wilder) and Whistle down the

Wind (1961). A theatrical version of the classic Ealing

comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets ( 1949; adapted from

Roy Horniman's novel Israel Rank, pub. 1907) toured

Britain to good notices in 1998. Even the French

cinema classic Les Enfants du paradis (1944) would be

brought—albeit unsuccessfully—to the London stage.

The adaptation has come full circle.

ADCOCK, (Kareen) Fleur (1934- ), poet and trans-

lator, born in New Zealand, and educated partly in

England, where she settled in 1963. Her volumes of

poetry include The Eye of the Hurricane (1964), High

Tide in the Garden (1971), The Inner Harbour (1979),

Selected Poems (1983, reissued 1991), a translated

selection of medieval Latin poems, The Virgin and the

Nightingale (1983), The Incident Book (1986), Time-

Zones (1991, with elegies for her father who died in

1987), and Looking Back (1997). Predominantly ironic

and domestic in tone, her work suggests wider hori-

zons through her evocations of travel and of varied

landscapes, and in recent years she has written about

public events (e.g. the fall of communism in Romania)

and environmental issues. She edited the Oxford Book

of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1983) and her

translations from the Latin of two *Goliardic poets,

Hugh Primas and the Arch Poet, appeared in 1994.

ADDISON, Joseph (1672-1719), the son of a dean of

Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse with *Steele and at

The Queen's College, Oxford, and Magdalen, of which

he became a fellow. He was a distinguished classical

scholar and attracted the attention of *Dryden by his

Latin poems. He travelled on the Continent from 1699

to 1703, and his Dialogues upon the Usefulness of

Ancient Medals ( published posthumously) were prob-

ably written about this time. In 1705 he published The

Campaign, a poem in heroic couplets in celebration of

the victory of * Blenheim. He was appointed under-

secretary of state in 1706, and was MP from 1708 till his

death. In 1709 he went to Ireland as chief secretary to

Lord Wharton, the lord-lieutenant. He formed a close

friendship with * Swift, Steele, and other writers and

was a prominent member of the *Kit-Kat Club.

Addison lost office on the fall of the Whigs in