ADAMSON, JOY; AND ADAMSON, GEORGE

born Jan. 20, 1910, Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary [now Opava, Czech Republic] died Jan. 3, 1980, Shaba National Reserve, Kenya born 1906, India died Aug. 20, 1989, Kora, Kenya Joy Adamson ne Joy-Friederike Victoria Gessner wife-and-husband conservationists who pioneered the movement to preserve African wildlife. Following an education in Vienna and two divorces, Austrian-born Joy Gessner, living in Kenya from 1939, 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 those describing how the couple raised a lion cub, Elsa, and returned it to its natural habitat. The trilogy 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) were all best-sellers that were developed into films and condensed into one volume as The Story of Elsa (1966). 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). Joy Adamson founded the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal (1961), an international group that financed conservation and education projects. After the pair separated (1971), she was murdered by a disgruntled employee (1980), and he was killed by animal poachers (1989).