Born Free

Product Information

The book that perhaps did most to inspire a generation to learn more about natural history and to support the work of conservation. An orphaned lion cub, the weakest of the litter that grew up into a beautiful lioness named Elsa, who got involved in many adventures with her foster parents. The film avoids tackling that element but is otherwise a very good interpretation of their lives and well worth watching. They were in the end successful, and Elsa became the first lioness successfully released back into the wild, the first to have contact after release, and the first known released lion to have a litter of cubs.

Peter did botanical paintings, and it was he who encouraged her to continue sketching and painting the flora and fauna in her surroundings. This is the original first edition of Born Free from 1960, when it was entitled Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds. Born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic) and was the 2nd of 3 girls. While neither wanted a divorce nor a legal separation, their conflicting interests (George wanted to continue to work with lions and she with cheetahs) made it necessary for them to live apart (though they sometimes discussed living together again, they never did).They were able to retain not only her friendship but her affectionate devotion when, long after reaching maturity, she became a full-grown, free-roaming lioness, and when one cuff from her mighty paw could mean a broken neck. I get so caught up in myself and the world around me, that I forget about the world that isn't outside my doorstep. In Born Free, Katharine tells her own story and it is both gripping and highly relevant to each one of us in the modern age. Sadly, because she had been taken from her mother at a young age and had been fed a poor diet, Bella developed a weak spine and back legs.

As Joy Adamson put it, their relationship continued "to be one of absolute equality quite different from that between a dog and his master. Adamson does not attempt to give Elsa a bath, though she does chase after her while trying to give her an enema at one point. In this empowering book, Katharine Hill brings a wealth of experience and practical, wise advice on how to live freely and lightly. it was a third of the way into the book that the truth was revealed to me: this is not Born Free, it's The Story of Elsa. A Foreword by George Page quoting Faith McNulty claimed Born Free "may have done for the cause of wildlife what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the antislavery crusade.Then, talking to our account manager at Bell and Bain, they expressed how they had been glad of all the work we’d sent them recently.

Finally, I can't help but think how cruel it was to Elsa to keep sneaking off and leaving her when she was sleeping. I love animal stories, I love animal pictures, I love stories about animals overcoming adversity to thrive. The print is "Collins Clear-Type", which is as it says a good clear text size for those who read normal print, and the paper is extremely good, of a heavy, dense quality, which has not even yellowed over the intervening 70 years.The only reason it's not getting five stars is simply because I like a more descriptive writing style. Katharine leads on Care for the Family’s policy agenda representing the organisation at government level. The book encloses a lot more detailed information about Elsa, her habits and her charismatic personality.