Mongkut Mongkut Phra Bat Somdet Phra Poramenthra Maha Mongkut Phra Chom Klao Chao Yu Hua (), or Rama IV, known in English-speaking countries as King Mongkut (18 October 18041 October 1868), was the fourth monarch of Siam (Thailand) under the House of Chakri, ruling from 1851 to 1868. Outside Thailand, he is best known as the king in the 1951 musical and 1956 film "The King and I", based on the 1946 film "Anna and the King of Siam"in turn based on a 1944 novel by an American missionary about Anna Leonowens' years at his court, from 1862 to 1867. During
Anna Leonowens the Long Island Historical Society, she lectured on subjects including "Christian Missions to Pagan Lands" and "The Empire of Siam, and the City of the Veiled Women". "The New York Times" reported: "Mrs. Leonowens' purpose is to awaken an interest, and enlist sympathies, in behalf of missionary labors, particularly in their relation to the destiny of Asiatic women." She joined the literary circles of New York and Boston and made the acquaintance of local lights on the lecture circuit, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", a book whose anti-slavery