Author: Moushumi Chakrabarty

ISBN: 1554390052

The following review was contributed by: John Walsh: CLICK TO VIEW John Walsh's Reviews

Anna Leonowens is famous still in Thailand as something of a traitor who happily took money and a high position from King Mongkut and then defamed him and the people of the Kingdom in her sensationalist books. However, her life took in many more adventures and experiences than the six years as governess to the King’s children and wives in Bangkok. Born into poverty in India, a fact she chose to conceal and instead substituted a fabricated background, she then traveled Southeast Asia as a single parent and teaching the offspring of colonial expatriates. After she left her position in Siam, she spent time in London, in America and Canada, among other places. In Halifax in Canada, she was part of the founding of what is now the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She also achieved some fame as a speaker and as an author of several books. Her final years were spent campaigning for women’s rights and on behalf of the underprivileged. Her family life was rather dysfunctional too. Two children died before reaching a week old. Two others survived. One, a daughter, she sent to a boarding school and did not see for the six years she was in Siam. Subsequently, the daughter Avis had an unhealthily close relationship with her mother. The other child, a son, she dismissed to a boarding school as a teenager and, despite the many letters she received from him begging to be allowed to leave, she did not relent. As a result, he cut his ties with her and they never met again.

Moushumi Chakravarty has explained the life of Anna Leonowens clearly and with an attempt to enter into the mind of the people she described. This slim book is readable and would be a good present for a young reader with an interest in the past. It is based entirely on secondary sources and adds little if anything to existing knowledge about the subject or any aspect of her life but this does not seem to be the purpose of the book, which is part of a series of books published by Altitude Publishing apparently aimed at a low-cost audience wishing for swift and easy reading. In this, the publishers seem to have succeeded admirably.