Books > Biography > Historical, political & military
|
Buy Now
Masked - The Life of Anna Leonowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R920
Discovery Miles 9 200
|
|
Masked - The Life of Anna Leonowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam (Hardcover)
Series: Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
|
A brave British widow goes to Siam and-by dint of her principled
and indomitable character-inspires that despotic nation to abolish
slavery and absolute rule: this appealing legend first took shape
after the Civil War when Anna Leonowens came to America from
Bangkok and succeeded in becoming a celebrity author and lecturer.
Three decades after her death, in the 1940s and 1950s, the story
would be transformed into a powerful Western myth by Margaret
Landon's best-selling book Anna and the King of Siam and Rodgers
and Hammerstein's musical The King and I. But who was Leonowens and
why did her story take hold? Although it has been known for some
time that she was of Anglo-Indian parentage and that her tales
about the Siamese court are unreliable, not until now, with the
publication of Masked, has there been a deeply researched account
of her extraordinary life. Alfred Habegger, an award-winning
biographer, draws on the archives of five continents and recent
Thai-language scholarship to disclose the complex person behind the
mask and the troubling facts behind the myth. He also ponders the
curious fit between Leonowens's compelling fabrications and the New
World's innocent dreams-in particular the dream that democracy can
be spread through quick and easy interventions. Exploring the full
historic complexity of what it once meant to pass as white, Masked
pays close attention to Leonowens's midlevel origins in British
India, her education at a Bombay charity school for Eurasian
children, her material and social milieu in Australia and
Singapore, the stresses she endured in Bangkok as a working widow,
the latent melancholy that often afflicted her, the problematic
aspects of her self-invention, and the welcome she found in
America, where a circle of elite New England abolitionists who knew
nothing about Southeast Asia gave her their uncritical support. Her
embellished story would again capture America's imagination as
World War II ended and a newly interventionist United States looked
toward Asia.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.