The Romance of the Harem

by Anna Harriette Leonowens

Overview

The Romance of the Harem, a classical and rare book that has been considered essential throughout human history, so that this work is never forgotten, we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789357978217
Publisher:	Alpha Edition
Publication date:	11/20/2023
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)

Editorial Reviews

Leonowens is best known as the heroine of the musical The King and I . Less well known is that her duties at the court of the Thai king included the education of the women in the king's harem in English and Western culture. This book, originally published in 1872 and long out of print, deals with her experiences in, and perceptions of, that oddly Eastern institution, inhabited by 9000 p. xviii women and children. Roundly condemned as fiction when first published, the work is now recovered by editor Morgan ( Sisters in Time ) as a kind of fictionalized history. Written in florid prose, the stories are fabulous--grisly tales of witchcraft, bastinado and other tortures (at one point the king builds a scaffold outside Leonowens's window, ostensibly to hang a woman and her illicit lover but in fact to terrorize Leonowens, who is in conflict with him over harem policy). Such tales are out of keeping with a king who was, by the standards of the day, an enlightened Western-style monarch. Morgan tries hard to equate Leonowens's style to contemporaries like Eliot and Dickens. In the end, however, the book is perhaps best viewed as a relic of its time rather than anything of enduring value. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly