author
Lady Margaret Brooke
1849–1936
A Victorian memoirist with an unusually adventurous life, she wrote from the crossroads of British high society and the Brooke court in Sarawak. Her books offer a personal view of colonial Borneo, court life, and the tensions of a very public marriage.
1 Audiobook
My life in Sarawak
by Lady Margaret Brooke
About the author
Born Margaret Alice Lili de Windt in 1849, she became Lady Margaret Brooke after marrying Charles Brooke, the second Rajah of Sarawak, in 1869. As the Ranee of Sarawak, she lived within the remarkable Brooke regime in Borneo and later drew on that experience in her writing.
Her best-known book, My Life in Sarawak (1913), gives readers a vivid, firsthand account of life at the Astana in Kuching and of the people and customs she encountered there. She later published Good Morning and Good Night (1934), another memoir looking back on her unusual life.
After becoming estranged from her husband, she spent much of her later life in London, where she moved in literary and social circles that included well-known writers of the period. She died in 1936, leaving behind memoirs that remain valuable for their personal window onto Sarawak and the Brooke era.