Table of Contents

Foreword to the New Edition by Dr. George B. Schaller • 5
Preface by Lord William Percy • 9
Foreword by Captain Charles Pitman  •  12

Cub Life  •  17
Elsa Meets Other Wild Animals  •  40
Elsa Goes to the Indian Ocian  •  57
The Man-Eating Lions  •  68
Safari to Lake Rudolf  •  80
Elsa and Wild Lions  •  110
The First Release  •  126
The Second Release  •  146
The Final Test  •  172
Postscripts  •  197
L'Envoi  •  220

About the Author

JOY ADAMSON was born in Austria in 1910 and educated in Vienna. At twenty-six, she went to Kenya to visit friends and remained there until her death in 1980. A well-known painter and photographer, she was commissioned by the government of Kenya to paint portraits of African tribesmen and to photograph the indigenous flora of East Africa, for which she received the Grenfell Gold Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In addition to founding the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal, devoted to the preservation of wildlife, she was the author of two other books, Living Free and Forever Free. She was married to George Adamson, the Senior Game Warden of the Northern Frontier Province in Kenya.

Reviews

“Moving and incredible, [with] some of the most extraordinary photographs ever seen.” 
—The New York Times

“Elsa and the Adamsons are ideal figures in a peaceable kingdom.” 
—The New Yorker

“Reads like a letter from Eden to homseick humanity.”
—New York Herald Tribune