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Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) Hardcover – June 30, 2014
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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.
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Best Regional Special Interest Boosk, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
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Print length543 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherUniversity of Wisconsin Press
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Publication dateJune 30, 2014
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Dimensions9.24 x 6.48 x 1.51 inches
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ISBN-100299298302
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ISBN-13978-0299298302
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“Thanks to Alfred Habegger’s careful detective work in archives scattered across five continents, we find out, layer by layer, what lay behind Anna Leonowens’s inventions, which she took much trouble to hide and deny.”―B. J. Terwiel, author of Thailand’s Political History
“Not just a book about Anna Leonowens; it is also more compellingly a history of why Americans so avidly took up her story.”—Wall Street Journal
“This is surely one of the most thorough debunkings ever written of a historical figure. . . . Anna Leonowens defeated every social taboo facing a poor, uneducated, Eurasian girl in the patriarchal, hierarchical, class- and race-bound British Empire. She did this so triumphantly that no one nowadays knows anything other than the story she invented. . . . Habegger has revealed for us the reality . . . and has brought back to life a really remarkable woman.”—Asian Review of Books
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William L. Andrews, Series Editor
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : University of Wisconsin Press; 1st edition (June 30, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 543 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0299298302
- ISBN-13 : 978-0299298302
- Item Weight : 1.95 pounds
- Dimensions : 9.24 x 6.48 x 1.51 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #597,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #455 in Southeast Asia History
- #1,741 in Women in History
- #6,785 in Women's Biographies
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Overall, I feel this was an even handed treatment of the subject, well researched and sensitive to both Thai and English histories.
HIGHLY recommended.