For the Love of a LionessElsa

Joy & George Adamson sacrif iced their l ives to the wilderness.

20 January 1910 – Friederike Victoria Gessner (Joy Adamson) was born in what is now the Czech Republic ( Austria-Hungary). Born to wealth in Hapsburg Austria, even as a child she adored the deer and foxes that abounded on the family estate. She relocated to Kenya in 1937, where she later married George Adamson, a British game warden.Kenya introduced Joy to her personal paradise.

Joy & George Adamson

3 February 1906 – George Alexander Graham Adamson was born in British India.Educated at Cheltenham, England, he first visited Kenya in 1924. He joined Kenya's game department in 1938 and was Senior Game Warden of the Northern Frontier District. Six years later, he married Joy. It was in 1956 that he raised the lioness cub, Elsa.

Joy Adamson with Elsa, the Lioness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkedTo3Oc0U

George Adamson at Kora reserve, Kenya

Celebrated naturalist Joy Adamson, 69, whose 1960 best-seller, Born Free, about a lion cub named Elsa died on 3 January1980, aged 69, not in the claws of the animals she adored but at the hands of the species she mistrusted: mankind. Her murderer was a disgruntled employee. 

Trust, Affection & Friendship

The wilderness lost their friend and love for humanity in 1989 when George was shot by natives.

Joy & George Adamson sacrificed their lives for the love of the animals in the wild.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfNwYQY8B6o

On Elsa by Joy Adamson -1960

George Adamson Autobiography -1987

George Adamson, protector of lions and their environment, was killed on Sunday 20 August, 1989 in an ambush a few miles from his isolated camp in northern Kenya,.The 83-year-old Adamson was shot dead at Kora Reserve by bandits when he went to the aid of a tourist.

A young Lion, holding a twig in his mouth, visits George's grave the day after George was buried. 

The lives of Joy & George Adamson in Kenya is re-enacted by Virginia McKenna & Bill Travers in the British movies..

• Born Free ( 1960)• Living Free ( 1961)• Forever Free (1962)

Books published by Joy Adamson