author
Anna Harriette Leonowens
1831–1915
Best remembered as the governess whose Siam memoirs inspired The King and I, she was also a teacher, travel writer, and outspoken advocate for women’s education. Her life mixed reinvention, controversy, and a gift for turning experience into vivid storytelling.
3 Audiobooks
The Romance of the Harem
by Anna Harriette Leonowens
The English Governess at the Siamese Court Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok
by Anna Harriette Leonowens
Life and Travel in India Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of Railroads
by Anna Harriette Leonowens
About the author
Anna Harriette Leonowens (1831–1915) was a writer, educator, and lecturer born in India who became internationally known after working in the 1860s as an English teacher at the court of King Mongkut of Siam, now Thailand. Her books The English Governess at the Siamese Court and The Romance of the Harem brought her wide attention and later helped inspire Anna and the King of Siam and The King and I.
Modern biographies note that she reshaped parts of her own background, and some of her accounts of court life are treated with caution today. Even so, her career remains fascinating: after leaving Siam, she lived in North America, wrote and lectured extensively, and became associated with reform-minded causes including women’s education and suffrage.
She died in Montreal in 1915. What keeps readers interested is not only her connection to a famous cultural legend, but the force of her personality: resourceful, ambitious, and determined to make a public life for herself in an era when women had limited freedom.