Anna Edwards was born in India in 1834, the daughter of a cabinetmaker who sadly passed away just three months prior to her birth. Following her father's untimely demise, her mother remarried an officer in the Engineers, who subsequently dispatched Anna and her sister, Eliza, to a prestigious school in England. The sisters eventually returned to India as teenagers, where Anna's stepfather endeavored to arrange a marriage between her and a man roughly twice her age. However, Anna managed to escape this unwanted union by joining Rev. Percy Badger on a thrilling tour of the Middle East.
Subsequently, Anna married a clerk named Thomas Leon Owens, and the couple had two children, a daughter named Avis and a son named Louis. Her husband, unfortunately, struggled to maintain a stable career, which led to the family relocating frequently. Moreover, he inexplicably altered his surname to Thomas Leonowens. Anna's life took a tragic turn when her husband succumbed to apoplexy in Penang, Malaya. After his passing, Anna relocated to Singapore, where she received an esteemed invitation to teach English to the children of the Siamese King.
Anna's experiences during this period would later be immortalized in her memoirs, although she did take some creative liberties with the facts. In her retelling, she altered her birthplace to Wales, deducted three years from her age, transformed her husband into a major in the British army, and even fabricated a tale about the brutal murder of a concubine, which never actually occurred. Anna's memoirs would go on to achieve widespread fame.
In her later years, Anna retired to Canada, where she became an ardent advocate for women's suffrage before her eventual passing. Interestingly, Anna's sister, Eliza, was the grandmother of the renowned actor Boris Karloff.
