Joy Adamson (1910-1980): naturalist, artist and author.

Friederike Victoria “Joy” Adamson was a passionate, temperamental and controversial woman. Although she married three times and was an infamous seducer, she never experienced happiness with any of her husbands or lovers. She won international renown with her African wildlife books, especially the trilogy describing how, together with her last husband, George Adamson, she raised a lion cub, Elsa, and returned it to its natural habitat. All three were best sellers that were later developed into films and condensed into one volume as The Story of Elsa (1966).

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 produced animal paintings, among them studies of Elsa and Pippa.

Joy Adamson pioneered the movement to preserve African wildlife but was murdered by a disgruntled employee in 1980. Her husband, George Adamson was killed by animal poachers in 1989. In 2004, however, in an extraordinary prison cell interview, his first since he was jailed for Adamson’s killing, Paul Nakware Ekai claimed that Joy Adamson was a ‘very hot-tempered’ boss, and that he killed her after she shot him for complaining about not being paid. An article in The Guardian, February 2004, raised the question: Was Joy Adamson an angel of mercy… or a tyrant?