Elsa the lioness live in the wild. Her efforts paid off, earning Elsa worldwide fame at the time, when her early life’s story was published in the book "Born Free". When Elsa was three years old, she brought three cubs of her own to show to the Adamsons, whom the Adamsons named “Jespah” (male), “Gop (male), and “Little Elsa” (female). The life of Elsa and her cubs is covered in the book "Living Free", published not long afterwards. Elsa's died prematurely of a form of babesiosis, a tick-borne blood disease similar to malaria which often infects the cat family. Elsa’s grave is in
Joy Adamson 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 Vienna, was educated in Vienna earning a music degree before studying sculpting and medicine. As a young adult, Adamson considered careers as a concert pianist, and in medicine. Joy Adamson married three times in the span of ten years. Her first marriage was to Viktor von Klarwill (aka Ziebel; 1902-1985). She went to Kenya in 1937 where she met and married in 1938 the botanist Peter