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If you thought you knew the story of Anna in The King and I, think again. As this riveting biography shows, the real life of Anna Leonowens was far more fascinating than the beloved story of the Victorian governess who went to work for the King of Siam. To write this definitive account, Susan Morgan traveled around the globe and discovered new information that has eluded researchers for years. Anna was born a poor, mixed-race army brat in India, and what followed is an extraordinary nineteenth-century story of savvy self-invention, wild adventure, and far-reaching influence. At a time when most women stayed at home, Anna Leonowens traveled all over the world, witnessed some of the most fascinating events of the Age of Empire, and became a well-known travel writer, journalist, teacher, and lecturer. She remains the one and only foreigner to have spent significant time inside the royal harem of Siam. She emigrated to the United States, crossed all of Russia on her own just before the revolution, and moved to Canada, where she publicly defended the rights of women and the working class. The book also gives an engrossing account of how and why Anna became an icon of American culture in The King and I and its many adaptations.… (more)
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Anna Leonowens was born in Indian, probably the
Similarly Anna Leonowens lied in her books about the Siamese court. Morgan tries to justify this on the dubious grounds that Leonowens was making a feminist statement. On the other hand, she then complains that Margaret Landon, who wrote Anna and the King of Siam, and the various adaptors of the story misrepresented Siam and King Mongkut. Somehow, it is their fault for believing Leonowen's lies, but not her fault for lying in the first place. Everyone except Anna, it seems, was an ethnocentric Westerner misinterpreting what they saw, and Morgan gives us some tortured analyses to make her point.
Still, Leonowens was an extraordinary woman, with all her faults, and it is extremely interesting to read about her life.