Anna Leonowens

Uncommon card · No. 94839

Anna Harriette Leonowens (born Ann Hariett Emma Edwards; 5 November 1831 – 19 January 1915) was an Anglo-Indian or Indian-born British travel writer, educator, and social activist. She became well known with the publication of her memoirs, beginning with The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870), which chronicled her experiences in Siam (modern Thailand), as teacher to the children of the Siamese King Mongkut. Leonowens's own account of her time in Siam was fictionalised in Margaret Landon's best-selling novel Anna and the King of Siam (1944) as well as adaptations such as Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 Tony Award-winning musical The King and I and its Academy Award-winning 1956 film adaptation, a short-lived CBS sitcom Anna and the King (1972), and the Academy Award-nominated film Anna and the King (1999). During the course of her life, Leonowens also lived in Western Australia, Singapore and Penang, the United States, Canada, and Germany. In later life, she was a lecturer of...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Robert Harris (1849-1919), Public domain