Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Imagine being hired by a king to teach his children, inside a palace city of wives, princes, temples, and strict old customs. Anna Leonowens lived that life in Bangkok in the 1860s, and this is her own telling of it: the schoolroom, the harem, the white elephant, the ceremonies, and the remarkable King Mongkut himself. It is curious, vivid, and sometimes sad. Few travel books take you so far inside a closed world.
In 1862 Anna Leonowens, a widowed English teacher in Singapore, accepted King Mongkut's invitation to teach English to the royal children of Siam. She stayed six years in the palace at Bangkok, teaching princes and princesses and, at times, the King's wives, and watching a court that few Europeans ever saw from inside.
Her thirty chapters mix schoolroom days with the life around her: the harem and its sorrows, Buddhist temples and cremations, the sacred white elephant, coronation ceremonies, and long conversations with the King himself, whose letters, written in his own lively English, she prints. A facsimile letter from his successor, King Chulalongkorn, also rides in the front matter here.
The book appeared in 1870, with her dedication dated 26 July that year. Later readers have questioned details of her account, and it is best read as her vivid personal record rather than a court history. As that, it remains absorbing: an observant outsider's portrait of old Bangkok as it was before railways, tourists, and revolutions changed it forever.
The English Governess at the Siamese Court, published in 1870, is Anna Harriette Leonowens's recollection of six years teaching the royal children in the palace at Bangkok. King Mongkut had sent to Singapore for an English teacher, and her chapters move between schoolroom, harem, temples, and court ceremony. The dedication is dated 26 July 1870, and all thirty chapters are complete here, with her Preface and the King's letter.
The front matter tells the story in miniature. There is Leonowens's dedication, dated 26 July 1870, to the American friend who urged her to write; her Preface, printing King Mongkut's own invitation letter of February 1862, with its hope that she will teach his beloved royal children; and a facsimile letter from the young King Chulalongkorn, answering her letter of sympathy on his father's death, in 1869. Then the thirty chapters open on the threshold of Bangkok. She describes the premier's house, sketches Siamese history, and enters the palace world: the temples of the Sleeping and Emerald Idols, her schoolroom of princes, the harem's shadows and whispers, little Fa Ying, the King's darling, the white elephant, coronation ceremonies, the queens, the hair cutting of the heir apparent, and court amusements. Chapters on Siamese literature, Buddhist doctrine, cremation, and superstition widen the view, before her portrait of the Supreme King, her retirement from the palace, a survey of the kingdom, an excursion to the ruins of Cambodia, and a closing Siamese legend. Published in 1870, her recollections of six years in the royal palace are complete here, exactly as she arranged them.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 8678.
The first chapter
Amarinde Winschley Palace Bangkok March 6th 1869
Mrs. A. H. Leonowens New York
Dear Madam,
I have great pleasure in condescending to answer your sympathising letter of 25th November last wherein the sorrowful expressions of your heart in relation to my most beloved Sovereign Father in demise which is a venerated burden and I have left to this day and ever more shall bear this most unexpressable loss in mind, with the deepest respect and lamentation, and resignation to the will of divine Providence;--are very loyal to you too to ful, and share your grief in behalf the affection you have for your royal pupils, and the kind remembrances you have made of them in your letter, loves you too with that respect and love your are held in ther esteem, for such disinterestioness in imparting knowledge to them during your stay here with us. I have the pleasure also, to mention you that our Government in counsel has elected me to assume the reins of Government notwithstanding my juvenility; and I am pleased to see the love the people have for me, most undoubtedly arising from the respect and veneration they have had for my beloved royal Father and I hope to render them prosperity and peace, and equal measure, they have enjoyed since the last reign in return.
May you and your beloved children be in the peace of the divine Providence.
I beg to remain,
Yours sincerely
Somdetch Phra Chulalonkorn Klou Chow-yu Hua Supreme King of Siam on 114th day of reign
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1870. Author died 1915. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
Starvard