Anna Leonowens

Anna Leonowens was an Anglo-Indian woman who was hired by Mongkut, King of Siam to teach his children. She later moved to Canada and became a Suffragette. She died in Montreal.

Leonowens wrote a memoir about teaching Mongkut’s children in 1870. Then in 1944, a woman named Margaret Landon decided to write a novel called Anna and the King of Siam based on it. It inspired the movie Anna and the King of Siam which came out in 1946. In 1951, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote a Musical called The King and I based on Leonowens’ life and book.