House, Adrian

views updated

HOUSE, Adrian

PERSONAL: Born in England. Education: Attended New College, Oxford.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o HiddenSpring/Paulist Press, 997 Macarthur Blvd., Mahwah, NJ 07430-2096.

CAREER: William Collins Publishers, London, England, managing director and publisher.

WRITINGS:

The Great Safari: The Lives of George and Joy Adamson, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1993

Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life, HiddenSpring (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: In 1960, London publishing house William Collins released the book Born Free, the story of a couple who raised a lion cub and returned her to the wild. As the one-time managing director of the publishing firm, Adrian House had access to the story behind the story: the volatile relationship between Joy and George Adamson, the heroes of Born Free, Joy Adamson's multiple affairs, including one with William Collins himself, and the emotional turmoil documented in diaries, letters, and interviews. House, who also assisted George Adamson with his autobiography, eventually transformed this information into his own book, The Great Safari: The Lives of George and Joy Adamson.

The Great Safari is not a tell-all biography detailing numerous scandals—although the scandals are there—but a portrait of the early years of the wildlife conservation movement and two passionate, if sometimes violent, defenders of animal rights. House depicts Joy Adamson as a jealous neurotic whose sexual appetite was legendary, but softens that picture by discussing the influence of a difficult childhood and her ability to channel her passions into her writings and art. As an illustrator and photographer, Joy exposed African wildlife and people to a larger world. Robert S. O. Harding, who reviewed The Great Safari in the New York Times Book Review, wrote that Joy's "studies of East African flowers and paintings of Kenya's tribal peoples have had lasting scientific and ethnographic value," a point House strives to make clear in his own work. House also portrays George as a skilled rehabilitator, observing that the scientific community of the Adamsons's era failed to see the value in his work. The story of the Adamsons continues until their separate murders, Joy in 1980, George in 1989. But reviewers suggested that the value of The Great Safari is not in the tragic, sometimes incomprehensible marriage, but in the book's emphasis on ecological concerns. Harding, in the New York Times Book Review, said The Great Safari was "well worth reading for a picture of this formative time and place in wildlife conservation." Similarly, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly concluded, "This moving story is flecked with piercingly beautiful evocations of African flora and fauna that make it a resounding plea for preservation of the earth and its multiple species."

House's second book is also concerned with the early influences on environmentalism. After spending four years researching in Italy, Britain, Spain, Egypt, and the United States, House produced Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life, a biography of the saint who was a friend to the poor, to women, and to animals. In the book, House writes he was motivated to write about St. Francis out of simple curiosity. Reviewers have suggested that although House's version of St. Francis's life is a relatively straightforward and respectful account, his attention to detail and his excellent writing made the book stand out among numerous earlier works as the definitive modern biography of the well-known saint.

House's time in Assisi, where he spent six months, also helps to distinguish his work. Living and working where Francis walked allowed House to put Francis's life in context. Writing for Library Journal, David Bourquin said that a major strength of the book is that House "effectively sets Francis's life within the social, economic, military, and religious forces of Italy" between the years 1182 and 1226. House also worked to write a book that would appeal to readers of any faith, focusing not only on Francis as a religious icon, but also as a man from a wealthy family and hedonistic background who developed modern ideas about morality. As John McMurtrie wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, "The strength of House's book is in portraying Francis as a human being. Francis comes across as a man blessed with great humility, decency, and intellect, but he's also a showman with razor wit. On his bad days, he's a crank whose fondness for rules gets the better of him."

A special focus of House's biography is Francis's relationship with Clare di Favarone, who founded her own religious order according to Francis's tenets and was canonized herself in 1255. In writing for a diverse readership, however, House omits or discounts some of Francis's more supernatural experiences. Some readers questioned this decision. Ann Wroe, writing for the London Daily Telegraph, suggested that while House "clearly sympathises deeply with Francis . . . the miraculous stories embarrass him." His selectiveness, Wroe proposed, reflects that "House can find modern psychological explanations for some of these phenomena, but not for others." Reviewing the book for the London Independent, Peter Stanford found that House is "hopelessly caught between the religious symbolism of much of the material and the agnosticism of the majority of his desired audience."

In general, however, House's approach to his subject resonated with critics, who suggested that in his efforts to create a broad appeal he created a highly readable biography. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked on House's skill as a storyteller and his ability to relate Francis's concerns to the modern world while avoiding anachronism: "Without casting Francis as a modern environmentalist or feminist, House nonetheless shows how the saint's great love for creation and regard for women captured the essence of these later movements." Catherine Pepinster, writing about the book for the London Independent, concluded that "the man who commits his life to identification with the urban poor, who believes in the need for man to develop a harmonious relationship with nature and is as concerned with the welfare of animals as with his fellow human beings, seems a cool hero for our own time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Audobon, January-February, 1994, Graham Boynton, review of The Great Safari: The Lives of George and Joy Adamson, p. 104.

Booklist, September 15, 1993, review of The Great Safari, p. 139; March 15, 2001, Ilene Cooper, review of Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life, p. 1335

Daily Telegraph (London, England), April 22, 2000, Ann Wroe, "God's New Sort of Fool."

Economist, October 30, 1993, review of The Great Safari, p. 104.

History Today, November 2001, Anne Pointer, review of Francis of Assisi, p. 54.

Independent (London, England), April 21, 2000, Peter Stanford, "Francis of Assisi: The Do-Good Dr Do-little of Hagiography," p. 5; May 7, 2000, Catherine Pepinster, review of Francis of Assisi, p. 49.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1993, review of The Great Safari, p. 1119.

Library Journal, October 15, 1993, review of The Great Safari, p. 71; January 1, 2001, David Bourquin, review of Francis of Assisi, p. 114.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, review of The Great Safari, p. 6.

New York Times Book Review, October 10, 1993, Robert S. O. Harding, "Elsa's Mom Was Hard to Bear," p. 14; March 11, 2001, Geoffrey Moorhouse, "The Patron Saint of Greenies," p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, September 13, 1993, review of The Great Safari, p. 108; February 26, 2001, review of Francis of Assisi, p. 81.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 2001, John Mc-Murtrie, "A Revolutionary Who Took Jesus at His Word," p. 6.

Soujourners, July 2001, Beth Isaacson, review of Francis of Assisi, p. 53.

Spectator, January 1, 1994, review of The Great Safari, p. 26; April 29, 2000, Christopher Howse, "The Case of the Camel That Passed through the Eye of a Needle," pp. 34-35.

Times Literary Supplement, January 28, 1994, Deborah L. Manzolillo, "Lionized Again," p. 27.