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Margaret Landon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Margaret Landon (September 7, 1903 - December 4, 1993) was an American writer who became famous for Anna and the King of Siam, her 1944 novel of the life of Anna Leonowens.
Born Margaret Dorothea Mortenson to A.D. and Adelle Mortensen in Somers, Wisconsin, she was one of three daughters in a devout Methodist family. The family moved to Evanston, Illinois, where she graduated from high school. She then attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, graduating in 1925. She taught school for a year, then married Kenneth Landon, who she knew from Wheaton, and in 1927 they signed up as Presbyterian missionaries to Thailand.
In addition to having three children and running a mission school in Trang, Landon read extensively about the country, during which she learned about Leonowens. When the family returned to America in 1937, she took up writing. She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1942 when her husband joined the United States Department of State as an adviser on Southeast Asia.
Her book on Leonowens was published in 1944 and became an instant bestseller. A later work, Never Dies the Dream, about her own experiences, appeared in 1949, but did not do nearly so well.
She died in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993, aged 90.