Anna Leonowens (26 November 1831–19 January 1915) was a
British travel writer, educator and social activist, known for teaching the wives and children of
Mongkut, king of
Siam, and for co-founding the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Leonowens's experiences in Siam were fictionalised in
Margaret Landon's 1944 novel
Anna and the King of Siam and in various films and television miniseries based on the book, most notably
Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 hit musical
The King and I.
Early life and family
Anna Leonowens was born Anna Harriette Edwards in
Ahmadnagar,
India on 26 November 1831. She was the second daughter of
Sergeant Thomas Edwards of the
Sappers and Miners, a former
London cabinetmaker, and his
Anglo-Indian wife, Mary Anne Glasscott, daughter of a
lieutenant in the
Bombay Army. In later life Leonowens was estranged from her family and took pains to disguise her humble origins by writing that she had been born a Crawford in
Caernarfon and giving her father's
rank as
captain. By doing so, she protected not only herself but her children, who would have greater opportunities if their mixed-race heritage remained unknown. Investigations uncovered no record of her birth at Caernarfon, news which came as a shock to the town that had long claimed her as one of its most famous natives.
Leonowens' father
died before she was born, and her mother married an
Irish soldier,
Corporal Patrick Donohoe of the
Engineers, who was later awarded the
Victoria Cross for bravery in
Bombay during the
Indian Mutiny. In 1845 her 15-year-old sister, Eliza Julia Edwards, married Edward John Pratt, a 38-year-old
British civil servant who had served in the
Indian Navy. Eliza and Edward had a son, Edward John Pratt, Jr., who in 1887, with his wife, Eliza Sarah Millard, had a son named William Henry Pratt, better known as film star
Boris Karloff. Because Pratt Sr. was also an Anglo-Indian, Leonowens never approved of her sister's marriage, and her disconnect from the family was so complete that decades later, when a Pratt relative contacted her, she replied threatening suicide if he persisted.
Leonowens' relationship with her stepfather Donohoe was not a happy one, and she later accused him of putting pressure on her, like her sister (with whom she also fell out), to marry a much older man. In 1847 the family went to
Aden, to where Donohoe had been seconded as assistant supervisor of
public works. Here Leonowens was taught by the resident
chaplain and
orientalist, the
Revd. George Percy Badger, and his wife Maria, a
missionary schoolmistress. The Badgers recognised the girl's aptitude for languages and in 1849 they took her with them on a tour through
Egypt and
Palestine.
Marriage and widowhood
At the end of 1849 Anna Edwards returned with her family to India, where in
Poona she married her childhood sweetheart, Thomas Leon Owens or Leonowens (2 May 1828 - 7 May 1859) (a
civilian clerk rather than the army officer of her romantic memoir), over the objections of her stepfather and mother, with whom she broke off all contact. The young couple took ship first to
Perth, Western Australia, where Leonowens, at this time going by her middle name, Harriette, tried to start a school for young ladies, and then to
Singapore and
Penang, where her husband found work as a
hotel keeper, only to die of
apoplexy in 1859 at the age of 31, leaving Leonowens an impoverished widow. Thomas Leonowens was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Penang. Of their four children, the two eldest had died in infancy. To support her surviving daughter Avis and son
Louis, Leonowens again took up teaching, and opened a school for the children of British officers in
Singapore. While the enterprise was not a financial success, it established her reputation as an educator.
Royal governess
In 1862 Leonowens accepted an offer made by the
Siamese consul in Singapore,
Tan Kim Ching, to teach the wives and children of
Mongkut,
king of
Siam. The king wished to give his 39 wives and
concubines and 82 children a
modern Western education on
scientific secular lines, which earlier
missionaries' wives had not provided. Leonowens sent her daughter Avis to school in
England, and took her son Louis with her to
Bangkok. She succeeded
Dan Beach Bradley, an
American missionary, as teacher to the Siamese
court.
Leonowens served at court until 1867, a period of nearly six years, first as a teacher and later as language secretary for the king. Although her position carried great respect and even a degree of political influence, she did not find the terms and conditions of her employment to her satisfaction, and came to be regarded by the king himself as a 'difficult woman and more difficult than generality'.
In 1868 Leonowens was on leave for her health in England and had been negotiating a return to the court on better terms when Mongkut fell ill and died. The king mentioned Leonowens and her son in his
will, though they did not receive the legacy. The new monarch, fifteen-year-old
Chulalongkorn, who succeeded his father, wrote Leonowens a warm letter of thanks for her services. He did not invite her to resume her post but they corresponded amicably for many years. Chulalongkorn made reforms for which his former tutor claimed some of the credit, including the abolition of the practice of
prostration before the royal person.
Literary career
By 1869 Leonowens was in
New York, and began contributing travel articles to a
Boston journal,
Atlantic Monthly, including 'The Favorite of the Harem', reviewed by the
New York Times as 'an Eastern love story, having apparently a strong basis of truth'. She expanded her articles into two volumes of memoirs, beginning with
The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870), which earned her immediate fame but also brought charges of sensationalism. In her writing she casts a critical eye over court life; the account is not always a flattering one, and has become the subject of controversy in
Thailand; she has also been accused of exaggerating her influence with the king.
Leonowens was a
feminist and in her writings she tended to focus on what she saw as the subjugated status of Siamese women, including those sequestered within the
Nang Harm, or royal
harem. She emphasised that although Mongkut had been a forward-looking ruler, he had desired to preserve customs such as prostration and
sexual slavery which seemed unenlightened and degrading. The sequel,
Romance of the Harem (1873), incorporates tales based on palace gossip, including the king's alleged torture and execution of one of his concubines, Tuptim; the story lacks independent corroboration and is dismissed as out of character for the king by some critics. A great granddaughter, Princess Vudhichalerm Vudhijaya (b. 21 May 1934), stated in a 2001 interview: 'King Mongkut was in the
monkshood for 27 years before he was king. He would never have ordered an execution. It is not the
Buddhist way.' She added that the same Tuptim was her grandmother and had married Chulalongkorn. (He had 36 wives.)
While in the United States Leonowens also earned much-needed money through popular lecture tours. At venues such as the house of Mrs. Sylvanus Reed in Fifty-third Street, New York City, in the regular members' course at Association Hall, or under the auspices of bodies such as the
Long Island Historical Society, she lectured on subjects including 'Christian Missions to Pagan Lands' and 'The Empire of Siam, and the City of the Veiled Women'.
['Mrs. Leonowens' First Lecture', New York Times (20 October 1874), p. 4.] The
New York Times reported: 'Mrs. Leonowens' purpose is to awaken an interest, and enlist sympathies, in behalf of missionary labors, particularly in their relation to the destiny of Asiatic women.'
She joined the literary circles of New York and Boston and made the acquaintance of local lights on the lecture circuit, such as
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and
Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book whose
anti-slavery message Leonowens had brought to the attention of the royal household, and which she said influenced Chulalongkorn's reform of slavery in Siam, a process he had begun in 1868, and which would end with its total abolition in 1915.
Later years
Leonowens resumed her teaching career and taught daily from 9 AM to 12 noon for an autumn half at the
Berkeley School of New York at 252
Madison Avenue,
Manhattan, beginning on October 5, 1880; this was a new
preparatory school for colleges and schools of science and her presence was advertised in the press.
Leonowens visited
Russia in 1881 and other
European countries, and continued to publish travel articles and books. She settled in
Halifax,
Nova Scotia,
Canada, where she again became involved in women's education, and was a
suffragette and one of the founders of the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After nineteen years, she moved to
Montreal,
Quebec.
Leonowens's daughter Avis married Thomas Fyshe, a
Scottish banker who ended the family's money worries, while her son
Louis returned to
Siam and became an officer in the Siamese royal
cavalry. He married Caroline Knox, a daughter of Sir Thomas George Knox, the British
consul-general in
Bangkok (1824–1887). Under Chulalongkorn's patronage, Louis Leonowens founded the successful trading company that still bears his name.
Anna Leonowens met Chulalongkorn again when he visited London in 1897, thirty years after she had left Siam, and the king took the opportunity to express his thanks in person.
Anna Leonowens died on January 19, 1915, at 83 years of age. She was interred in
Mount Royal Cemetery in
Montreal.
Anna Leonowens in fiction and film
Margaret Landon's novel
Anna and the King of Siam (1944) provides a fictionalised look at Anna Leonowens's years at the royal court, developing the
abolitionist theme that resonated with her American readership. In 1946 Talbot Jennings and Sally Benson adapted it into the
screenplay for a
dramatic film of the same name, starring
Irene Dunne and
Rex Harrison. In response Thai authors
Seni and
Kukrit Pramoj wrote their own account in 1948 and sent it to American politician and diplomat Abbot Low Moffat (1901-1996), who drew on it for his biography
Mongkut, the King of Siam (1961). Moffat donated the Pramoj brothers' manuscript to the
Library of Congress in 1961.
Landon had, however, created the iconic image of Leonowens, and 'in the mid-20th century she came to personify the eccentric
Victorian female traveler'. The novel was adapted as a hit musical comedy by
Rodgers and Hammerstein,
The King and I (1951), starring
Gertrude Lawrence and
Yul Brynner, which ran 1,246 performances on
Broadway. In 1956 a film version was released, with
Deborah Kerr starring in the role of Leonowens. Revived many times on stage, the musical has remained a favourite of the theatre-going public. However the humorous depiction of Mongkut as a
polka-dancing
despot is condemned as disrespectful in Bangkok, where the Rodgers and Hammerstein film was banned by the present monarch,
Bhumibol. The king and his entourage said that from what they could gather from the reviews of the musical, the characterisation of Mongkut seemed '90 percent exaggerated. My great-great-grandfather was really quite a mild and nice man.'
In 1972
Twentieth Century Fox produced a 13-part American television adaptation for
CBS, with
Samantha Eggar taking the part of Leonowens and Brynner reprising his role as the king. Landon charged the makers with 'inaccurate and mutilated portrayals' of her literary property and sued unsuccessfully for copyright infringement. In 1999 an
animated version of the musical was released by
Warner Bros. Animation. In the same year
Jodie Foster and
Chow Yun-Fat starred in a new feature-length cinematic remake entitled
Anna and the King. One Thai critic complained that the
film-makers had made Mongkut 'appear like a cowboy'; this version was also banned by censors in Thailand.
See also
