Born: January 20, 1910, Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary [now Opava, Czech Republic] Died: January 3, 1980, Shaba National Reserve, Kenya Born: 1906, India
Died: August 20, 1989, Kora, Kenya
Joy and George were wife-and-husband conservationists who pioneered the movement to preserve African wildlife.
Following education in Vienna and two divorces, Joy Gessner relocated to Kenya (1939), where she married George Adamson (1944), a British game warden who had worked in Kenya as a gold prospector, goat trader and safari hunter from 1924. She won international renown with her African wildlife books, especially the trilogy describing how the couple raised a lion’s cub, Elsa, and returned it to its natural habitat: Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds (1960), Living Free: The Story of Elsa and Her Cubs (1961), and Forever Free: Elsa’s Pride (1962). All three were best-sellers that were later developed into films and condensed into one volume as The Story of Elsa (1966). Her other books included The Peoples of Kenya (1967), The Searching Spirit: An Autobiography (1978), and Queen of Shaba: The Story of an African Leopard (1980).
In 1961, Joy founded the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal (later renamed the Elsa Conservation Trust), an international group that financed conservation and education projects. After the Adamsons separated (1971), Joy was murdered by a disgruntled employee (1980), and George was killed by animal poachers (1989).
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