Joy Adamson Biography

Real name Fredericke Victoria, Joy Adamson will be remembered as one of the twentieth century’s great conservationists.

Born into a wealthy family in Troppau, Silesia, and brought up in Vienna, she studied the piano. Finding it hard to forge a career as a concert pianist, she tried dressmaking, bookbinding and drawing, whilst pursuing a strong interest in archaeology.

She decided to study medicine, but declined to take her entrance exams, and was married to Victor von Klarwill in 1935.

Whilst travelling in Kenya, she met Peter Bally, a botanist, in 1937. She soon divorced her husband, upon him joining her there and subsequently married Bally in 1938.

Accompanying him on his field trips and painting hundreds of studies of flora and fauna, their marriage also soured. She later married George Adamson, the British game warden in the North Frontier District of Kenya.

Joy began painting illustrations of animals and people, as well as plants. The Colonial Government of Kenya commissioned her to paint portraits of members of 22 tribes whose culture was vanishing. These paintings, some 600, now belong to the National Museum of Kenya.

She began her famous association with Elsa, a tame lion-cub whom she was determined to teach to return to the wild, in 1956. 'Born Free', her account of the process, was a worldwide success, published in 1960. It was followed by 'Living Free' (1961) and 'Forever Free' (1962).

The 1966 film Born Free, starring husband-and-wife actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna and filmed in the bush over the course of many months, was a worldwide hit. The stars got to know the real Adamsons, and the couples remained friends for life, working for wildlife causes.

In 1964 she also retrained Pippa, a cheetah described in 'The Spotted Sphinx' (1969), and worked with other animals.

From the 1960s she was a leading conservationist, beginning with her
work in launching the World Wildlife Fund in the USA in 1962.

On 3rd January 1980, she was found dead in northern Kenya in suspicious circumstances. Supposedly mauled by a lion, a man was later charged with her murder.

Tragically, George Adamson was murdered nine years later, in 1989, near his camp in Kora, while rushing to the aid of a tourist who was being attacked by poachers.