22-475: Friederike Victoria " Joy " Adamson ( née Gessner ; 20 January 1910 – 3 January 1980) was a naturalist, artist and author. Her book, Born Free , describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa . Born Free was printed in several languages and made into an Academy Award -winning movie of the same name . In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art . Adamson
44-549: A zoo in Rotterdam , and the smallest, "Elsa", was raised by the couple. After some time living together, the Adamsons decided to set Elsa free rather than send her to a zoo, and spent many months training her to hunt and survive on her own. They were in the end successful, and Elsa became the first lioness successfully released back into the wild, the first to have contact after release, and the first known released lion to have
66-489: A home at Serengeti National Park . In the concluding part of Forever Free the Adamsons lost track of the cubs in their new home. After describing a fruitless search, Joy Adamson contemplated a pair of lions: "My heart was with them wherever they were. But it was also with these two lions here in front of us; and as I watched this beautiful pair, I realized how all the characteristics of our cubs were inherent in them. Indeed, in every lion I saw during our searches I recognized
88-455: A litter of cubs. The Adamsons kept their distance from the cubs, getting close enough only to photograph them. In January 1961, Elsa died from babesiosis , a disease resulting from a tick bite. Her three young cubs became a nuisance, killing the livestock of local farmers. The Adamsons, who feared the farmers might kill the cubs, were able to eventually capture them and transport them to neighboring Tanganyika Territory , where they were promised
110-485: A person upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname , the given name , or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth register may by that fact alone become the person's legal name . The assumption in the Western world is often that the name from birth (or perhaps from baptism or brit milah ) will persist to adulthood in
132-461: Is the masculine form. The term née , having feminine grammatical gender , can be used to denote a woman's surname at birth that has been replaced or changed. In most English-speaking cultures, it is specifically applied to a woman's maiden name after her surname has changed due to marriage. The term né can be used to denote a man's surname at birth that has subsequently been replaced or changed. The diacritic mark (the acute accent ) over
154-456: The e is considered significant to its spelling, and ultimately its meaning, but is sometimes omitted. According to Oxford University 's Dictionary of Modern English Usage , the terms are typically placed after the current surname (e.g., " Margaret Thatcher , née Roberts" or " Bill Clinton , né Blythe"). Since they are terms adopted into English (from French), they do not have to be italicized , but they often are. In Polish tradition ,
176-655: The Lioness . In 1956, George Adamson, in the course of his job as game warden of the Northern Frontier District in Kenya, shot and killed a lioness as she charged him and another warden. George later realized the lioness was just protecting her cubs, which were found nearby in a rocky crevice. Taking them home, Joy and George found it difficult to care for all the cubs' needs. The two largest cubs, named "Big One" and "Lustica", were passed on to be cared for by
198-413: The aid of a tourist who was being attacked by poachers. He is credited with saving the tourist's life. In addition to Joy Adamson's books about big cats, a book of her artwork was published as an autobiography entitled The Searching Spirit . George Adamson's second autobiography, My Pride and Joy , was published in 1986. Birth name#Maiden and married names A birth name is the name given to
220-447: The botanist Peter Bally , who gave her the nickname "Joy". Peter did botanical paintings, and it was he who encouraged her to continue sketching and painting the flora and fauna in her surroundings. She met her third husband, senior wildlife warden George Adamson , while on safari in the early 1940s and married him in 1944. They made their home together in Kenya. Joy Adamson is best known for her conservation efforts associated with Elsa
242-402: The events of Elsa's life leading up to her release. Subsequent books were also heavily illustrated. Born Free received largely favorable reviews from critics. Adamson worked closely with publishers to promote the book, which contributed to the Adamsons' new-found international celebrity. She spent the rest of her life raising money for wildlife, thanks to the popularity of Born Free . The book
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#1732802335529264-782: The intrinsic nature of Elsa, Jespah, Gopa and Little Elsa, the spirit of all the magnificent lions in Africa". During Elsa's lifetime, Joy and George Adamson needed each other to educate her, but after she died and her cubs were taken in by the park, their interests went in separate directions, as did their lives. While neither wanted a divorce nor a legal separation, their conflicting interests (George wanted to continue to work with lions and she with cheetahs) made it necessary for them to live apart (though they sometimes discussed living together again, they never did). They spent each Christmas together and they remained on good terms. Using her own notes and George's journals, Joy wrote Born Free to tell
286-406: The lion's tale. She submitted it to a number of publishers before it was bought by Harvill Press, part of HarperCollins . Published in 1960, it became a bestseller, spending 13 weeks at the top of The New York Times Best Seller list and nearly a year on the chart overall. The success of the book was due to both the story of Elsa and the dozens of photographs of her. Readers had pictures of many of
308-405: The normal course of affairs—either throughout life or until marriage. Some reasons for changes of a person's name include middle names , diminutive forms, changes relating to parental status (due to one's parents' divorce or adoption by different parents), and gender transition . The French and English-adopted née is the feminine past participle of naître , which means "to be born". Né
330-467: The term z domu (literally meaning "of the house", de domo in Latin ) may be used, with rare exceptions, meaning the same as née . Born Free (book) Born Free is a book by Joy Adamson . Released in 1960 by Pantheon Books , it describes Adamson's experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa . It was translated into several languages, and made into an Academy Award -winning 1966 film of
352-563: The village called Kreuzberg (now Kružberg, Czech Republic. With the outbreak of the WWII she had moved to Vienna earning a music degree before studying sculpting and medicine. As a young adult, Adamson considered careers as a concert pianist, and in medicine.(Zuzana Beranova, Dlouhe safari z Opavy do Keni) Joy Adamson married three times in the span of ten years. Her first marriage in 1935 was to Viktor von Klarwill (aka Ziebel; 1902–1985). She went to Kenya in 1937 where she met and married in 1938
374-479: Was born to Victor and Traute Gessner ( née Greipel) in Troppau , Silesia , Austria-Hungary (now Opava , Czech Republic ), the second of three daughters. Her parents died when she was 10, and she went to live with her grandmother. In her autobiography The Searching Spirit , Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me". She grew up on an estate near Opava in
396-424: Was discovered by her assistant, Pieter Mawson. He mistakenly assumed she had been killed by a lion, and this was what was initially reported by the media. She was a few weeks short of her 70th birthday. The police investigation found Adamson's wounds were too sharp and bloodless to have been caused by an animal, and concluded she had been murdered. Paul Nakware Ekai, a discharged labourer formerly employed by Adamson,
418-729: Was eight weeks old when a ranger acquaintance of George Adamson found her in 1976. Penny had a litter of two cubs before the publication of Queen of Shaba , Adamson's posthumous and final book. During her lifetime, she created more than 500 paintings and line drawings. Her work included portraits of the indigenous populations commissioned by the government of Kenya, as well as botanical illustrations for at least seven books on East African flora. She also did animal paintings, among them studies of Elsa and Pippa. On 3 January 1980, in Shaba National Reserve in Kenya , Joy Adamson's body
440-468: Was followed by Living Free , which is about Elsa as a mother to her cubs, and Forever Free , which tells of the release of the cubs Jespah, Gopa and Little Elsa. Adamson shared book proceeds with various conservation projects. While television specials kept the Adamsons' cause in the spotlight, Adamson spent her last 10 years travelling the world, giving speeches about the perils faced by wildlife in Africa. A book of her paintings, Joy Adamson's Africa ,
462-655: Was found guilty of murder and sentenced to indefinite imprisonment . He escaped capital punishment because the judge ruled he might have been a minor when the crime was committed. Joy Adamson was cremated and her ashes were buried in Elsa the Lioness 's grave in Meru National Park in Meru, Kenya. George Adamson was murdered nine years later in 1989, near his camp in Kora National Park , while rushing to
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#1732802335529484-433: Was published in 1972. She rehabilitated a cheetah and an African leopard. Pippa the cheetah was raised as a pet and given to Adamson at the age of seven months in hopes that she could also be released. Pippa had four litters before her death. Adamson wrote The Spotted Sphinx and Pippa's Challenge about Pippa and her cheetah family. Later, Adamson reached her goal of many years, when she obtained an African leopard cub. Penny
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