by Anna Leonowens
Oxford University Press, USA; 1st edition (March 17, 1989), Originally published in 1870

The English Governess at the Siamese Court: Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok (1870) vividly recounts the experiences of one Anna Harriette Leonowens as governess for the sixty-plus children of King Mongkut of Siam, English teacher for his entire royal family, and translator and scribe for the King himself. Bright, young, and energetic, Leonowens was well-suited to these roles, and her writings convey a heartfelt interest in the lives, legends, and languages of Siam’s rich and poor. She also tells of how she and the King often disagreed on matters domestic. After all, this was the first time King Mongkut had met a woman who dared to contradict him, and the governess found the very idea of male domination intolerable. Overworked and underpaid, Leonowens would eventually resign, but her exchanges with His Majesty–heated and otherwise–on topics like grammar, charity, slavery, politics, and religion add much to her diary’s rich, cross-cultural spirit, its East-meets-West appeal.

Over the years, that appeal has only increased. Eighty years after it first appeared, this memoir inspired the popular book and film, Anna and the King of Siam, and a few years later the hit musical, The King and I. Now comes yet another version, Anna and the King, the new film starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat. Here, then, is the original tale, presented with many reproductions of the fine drawings that the King had offered as gifts to Leonowens. The English Governess at the Siamese Court remains engaging as a story of adventure, fascinating as a picture of nineteenth-century Bangkok, and intriguing as an account of life inside King Mongkut’s palace.

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by Margaret Landon
Harper Paperbacks, 1999; Originally published in 1944

Anna Leonowens, a proper Englishwoman, was an unlikley candidate to change the course of Siamese (Thai) history. A young widow and mother, her services were engaged in the 1860′s by King Mongkut of Siam to help him communicate with foreign governments and be the tutor to his children and favored concubines. Stepping off the steamer from London, Anna found herself in an exotic land she could have only dreamed of lush landscape of mystic faiths and curious people, and king’s palace bustling with royal pageantry, ancient custom, and harems. One of her pupils, the young prince Chulalongkorn, was particularly influenced by Leonowens and her Western ideals. He learned about Abraham Lincoln and the tenets of democracy from her, and years later he would become Siam’s most progressive king. He guided the country’s transformation from a feudal state to a modern society, abolshing slavery and making many other radical reforms.

Weaving meticulously researched facts with beautifully imagined scenes, Margret Landon recreates an unforgettable portrait of life in a forgotten extotic land. Written more than fifty years ago, and translated into dozens of languages, ” Anna and the King of Siam “(the inspiration for the magical play and film “The King and I”)continues to delight and enchant readers around the world.

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by Anna Leonowens
University of Virginia Press, 1991; Originally published in 1873

The author is Anna Leonowens, the lovely English governess to the children of the King of Siam whose story is immortalized, highly romanticized in the Rogers & Hammerstein musical “The King and I” (1951). “Truth is often stranger than fiction,” writes Leonowens. Fiction based on fact, embellished to fascinate the reader and get the point across, is perhaps a more precise description of all the gruesome torture and persecutions of the ladies of the harem by the King who was a Buddhist monk and abbot for 26 years before ascending to the throne.

King Mongkut’s harem was so immense it encompassed an enormous complex within the Grand Palace in Bangkok called the Nang Harm (“Veiled Women”), surrounded by a high wall, housing the royal princesses, wives, and concubines of the king. It was a world of its own, complete with Amazon-women guards, prisons, judges and executioners, but also schools and theaters. Here the women carried out their connubial duty to produce the king’s heirs. When King Mongkut died he left behind 66 royal children.

After five years, Anna Leonowens left, traveling to England and Ireland before settling in the United States and eventually Canada, where she once again supported herself by teaching.

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by Susan Morgan
University of California Press, 2008

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.

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by Abbot Low Moffat
Cornell University Press; 1st Cornell Printing edition (1968)

In this fascinating biography, Moffat considers Mongkut to be one of the great men of Siam, and seeks to recover him from the well-loved fictions. Includes a number of black-and-white illustrations. He is skeptical of the reliability of Anna Leonowns accounts and analyzes some of them.

Must reading for the fans of Margaret Landon and the stage play / movies and people with an interest in Asian history.

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by Maurizio Peleggi
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2002

Lords of Things offers an intriguing interpretation of modernity in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Siam by focusing on the novel material possessions and social practices adopted by the royal elite to refashion its self and public image in the early stages of globalization. It examines the westernized modes of consumption and self-presentation, the residential and representational architecture, and the public spectacles appropriated by the Bangkok court not as byproducts of institutional reformation initiated by modernizing sovereigns, but as practices and objects constitutive of the very identity of the royalty as a civilized and civilizing class.

Bringing a wealth of new source material into a theoretically informed discussion, Lords of Things will be required reading for historians of Thailand and Southeast Asia scholars generally. It represents a welcome change from previous studies of Siamese modernization that are almost exclusively concerned with the institutional and economic dimensions of the process or with foreign relations, and will appeal greatly to those interested in transnational cultural flows, the culture of colonialism, the invention of tradition, and the relationship between consumption and identity formation in the modern era.

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by Roger Kershaw
Routledge, 2000

This title is the first study to relate the history and contemporary role of the South East Asian monarchy to the politics of the region today. Comprehensive & up-to-date, Monarchy in South East Asia features an historical and political overview of Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, as well as the region in general. The excellent coverage of this fascinating subject should be of interest to general reader as well as to specialists focusing on region.

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by Tenzin Dawa
ThaiSunset Publications, 2011

His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is divinely revered by Thais. Still, during His Majesty’s long reign of 65 years [as of 2011], the King has seen over 15 military coups, 16 constitutions, and 28 changes of prime ministers. The King has also used his influence to stop military coups, among others, including attempts in 1981 and 1985.

It has often been said that the independence and integrity of Thailand is assured by three unifying factors: its people’s carefree disposition, the tolerant Buddhist Religion, and the Thai Throne. For seven centuries Thailand has successfully survived as an independent country while countries all around in Southeast Asia disintegrated or fell victim of colonialist powers. For that reason, no Thai would now deny that as these unique and sacred institutions survive and flourish, so the Thai nation will also survive and flourish. Without either one of them, no one could foresee what Thailand would be like

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Queen Sirikit, and the Heir-apparent are legally considered “inviolable” and criticism can result in three to fifteen years imprisonment; although the King said in his 2005 birthday speech that he would not be offended by lèse majesté, since “the King is human.”

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by Paul M. Handley
Yale University Press, 2006

Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only king ever born in the United States, came to the throne of his country in 1946 and is now the world’s longest-serving monarch. The King Never Smiles, the first independent biography of Thailand’s monarch, tells the unexpected story of Bhumibol’s life and sixty-year rule—how a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha, and how a king widely seen as beneficent and apolitical could in fact be so deeply political and autocratic.

Paul Handley provides an extensively researched, factual account of the king’s youth and personal development, ascent to the throne, skillful political maneuverings, and attempt to shape Thailand as a Buddhist kingdom. Handley takes full note of Bhumibol’s achievements in art, in sports and jazz, and he credits the king’s lifelong dedication to rural development and the livelihoods of his poorest subjects. But, looking beyond the widely accepted image of the king as egalitarian and virtuous, Handley portrays an anti-democratic monarch who, together with allies in big business and the corrupt Thai military, has protected a centuries-old, barely modified feudal dynasty.

When at nineteen Bhumibol assumed the throne, the Thai monarchy had been stripped of power and prestige. Over the ensuing decades, Bhumibol became the paramount political actor in the kingdom, silencing critics while winning the hearts and minds of his people. The book details this process and depicts Thailand’s unique constitutional monarch—his life, his thinking, and his ruling philosophy.

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by David Streckfuss
Routledge, 2011

Since 2005, Thailand has been in crisis, with unprecedented political instability and the worst political violence seen in the country in decades. In the aftermath of a military coup in 2006, Thailand’s press freedom ranking plunged, while arrests for lèse-majesté have skyrocketed to levels unknown in the modern world. Truth on Trial in Thailand traces the 110-year trajectory of defamation-based laws in Thailand. The most prominent of these is lèse-majesté, but defamation aspects also appear in laws on sedition and treason, the press and cinema, anti-communism, contempt of court, insulting of religion, as well as libel. This book makes the case that despite the appearance of growing democratization, authoritarian structures and urges still drive politics in Thailand; the long-term effects of defamation law adjudication has skewed the way that Thai society approaches and perceives “truth.”

Employing the work of Habermas, Foucault, Agamben, and Schmitt to construct an alternative framework to understand Thai history, Streckfuss contends that Thai history has become “suspended” since 1958, and repeatedly declining to face the truth of history has set the stage for an endless state of crisis.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South East Asian politics, Asian history, and media and communication.

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