Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess (Philip E. Lilienthal Books) [Paperback]

Susan Morgan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520261631 | ISBN-13: 978-0520261631 | Publication Date: September 29, 2009 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Morgan, the inspiration for the governess to the royal Siamese children in the 1950s musical The King and I, Anna Leonowens (1831–1915) was not the genteel British lady she purported to be, but a low-born, Anglo-Indian army brat who had severed ties with her family in India. A young widow living in Singapore, Leonowens was hired by King Mongkut to teach his wives and 82 children English. An absolute monarch committed to improving his people's lives and avoiding foreign control of his country, Mongkut had no romantic interest in Leonowens but shared her deep love of learning, occasionally consulted her on state issues and considered her arguments about the treatment of his enslaved harem. After Siam, the irrepressible Leonowens again reinvented herself as an eminent author and public lecturer in the U.S. and Canada, a social reformer and suffragist in Canada, a journalist in Russia and a Sanskrit scholar in Germany. Miami University English professor Morgan (Place Matters) uncovers and competently demonstrates the achievements of an extraordinary Victorian woman, but her biography is undermined by repetitious and charmless prose, underdeveloped analyses of Western/Thai political relationships and unfocused ramblings about the nature of biography. 15 b&w photos. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"A lively incarnation of Anna, one that gives the character of the musical and movies full humanity in historical context."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"Morgan paints a satisfying, multifaceted portrait. Engrossing retelling of an extraordinary life, correcting many popular misconceptions."--Kirkus Reviews

"This informed and entertaining biography reveals Leonowens as an intriguing and complex woman, whose interests ranged far beyond young lovers and whistling happy tunes."--Foreword

"A fascinating, scholarly work."--Library Journal

"Pick up Bombay Anna and be prepared to find an inspiring story of an incredible woman."--Feminist Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520261631
• ISBN-13: 978-0520261631
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,077,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > History > Asia > Thailand

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating story marred by dithering and special pleading, July 22, 2009

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess (Hardcover)

This is an interesting book, and well-worth reading, but marred by dithering when the author has to confront Anna Leonowen's lies. Although the author has obviously done a great deal of research, she also slips in a good bit of speculation.

AL was apparently an extraordinary woman, a polyglot, and to a great extent self-educated. She pursued several careers; after her famous sojourn at the Siamese court, she became a writer and lecturer. She was not what she appeared to be, however.

Anna Leonowens was born in India, probably the grand-daughter of an Anglo-Indian. She reinvented herself as a British lady, born in Wales. This does not bother me per se. The deception enabled her to make use of her great talents and support her children; she didn't use it to commit fraud. Morgan dithers about this and the nature of identity at great length in the beginning of the book. In passing, however, one has to abandon one's birth family. Forced to confront this, Morgan makes up possible excuses as to why Leonowen's family, who appear to have been loving and supportive, "might" have deserved to be abandoned, rather than accepting that this was probably a slightly ruthless, pragmatic decision on Anna's part--we don't actually know what her family thought. Perhaps they wished her the best.

The information about the Anglo-Indians extremely interesting. Many British men came to India to make their fortune, but few were able to bring a wife with them, and only the highest ranking men could hope to find a British wife in India. Inevitably, there was mixing with Indian women, and their descendants formed their own sub-society, with lower ranking British men. These people were considered inferior to "real" Britons, and so AL decided to "pass."

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reality Trumps Fantasy, September 20, 2008

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess (Hardcover)

We all know the story of Anna and the king of Siam through the books, Broadway play and movie. But that romanticized version is more fiction than fact. What a shock to learn that Anna, the British governess to the king, really came from India! The daughter of an Englishman and a woman of mixed Indian and Anglo descent, she grew up in crowded military barracks, far from the ideal fantasy that she created. She married Corporal Thomas Leon Owens when she was eighteen, and had four children. After the deaths of her husband and two of her children, Anna took her remaining children to Singapore, arriving with the fantastic story that has clung to her all these years: that she was a British gentlewoman from Wales, widow of Major Thomas Leonowens, with two children born in England. But the true story is much more compelling.

Anna had a photographic memory. She was multilingual and tolerant of all cultures through her association with the people in India--Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus. She learned Sanskrit and traveled extensively lecturing and teaching after her position ended in Siam.

Anna was the only Western person allowed in the king's harem of over sixty children, their mothers, and servants. Since they could not leave the harem, she viewed them as being incarcerated, and she worked diligently for their release. As researcher and author Susan Morgan writes, "Her critiques of Siam were not about how the West should treat the East. They were about how men should treat women, about the immense potential women have if only allowed to develop it freely, and about the equalities that should exist between people everywhere as a natural and spiritual right."

Morgan's extensive and careful research provides the reader with the facts of Anna's life and shows how this amazing woman truly lived and fought for women's rights by exemplifying the principles she espoused in her own life. Throughout the book, pictures of Anna at various ages add to the narrative. The only drawback is the repetition that makes some of the chapters sound as if they may have been written as stand-alone articles. Recommended for women's and multicultural collections.

by Susan Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous, July 7, 2008

By 

Book Hound (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess (Hardcover)

What a wonderful book! So full of information, so well-written and easy to read, I couldn't put it down. Author Susan Morgan not only brings Anna Leonowens's remarkable life to life, she makes the reader see why Leonowens made up so much of her "official" life story, and why the (false) image of blond Anna (a lie) dancing with King Monghut (played by Yul Brynner) in The King and I, has had such a powerful grip on our imaginations. Anna Leonowens could do a lot more than dance, and Susan Morgan can really tell a story.