Joy Adamson Joy Adamson 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 was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three daughters. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she went to live with
Jack H. Adamson by the New York Times. In 1974, Adamson and Folland published a biography of Sir Henry Vane the Younger, early governor of Massachusetts and central figure in the English Revolution. The book received nomination for the National Book Award. Jack H. Adamson Jack Hale Adamson (1918–1975) was a literary scholar, biographer, teacher, and university administrator. The son of prominent Idaho statesman William Lennox Adamson, Adamson was born in 1918 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and lived in the small town of Carey, Idaho. Born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served a church mission