Margaret Landon

Margaret Landon (1903-1993) was born Margaret Dorothea Mortenson in Somers, Wisconsin, on September 7, 1903. She was one of three daughters of A.D. and Adelle Mortenson, devout Methodists who soon moved to Evanston, Illinois. She graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1921 and from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois in 1925. After a year of teaching, she married Kenneth Landon, who she had met at Wheaton. In 1927 the young couple set out for service as Presbyterian missionaries in Siam, now Thailand. In her ten years there, Mrs. Landon gave birth to three children, all in Bangkok. She served as principal of a mission school in Trang, reading widely about the country and its history. In the process, she learned of Anna Leonowens. In 1937 she returned to America with her family and soon began writing, first articles, then a book about Leonowens. In 1942 she moved to Washington, D.C., where her husband had joined the government as an expert on Southeast Asia.