Claim: The King and I is based on a novel by an American writer born in 1908.
Evidence: It is based on Margaret Landon 's novel , Anna and the King of Siam -LRB- 1944 -RRB- , which is in turn derived from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens , governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s.
Margaret Landon -LRB- September 7 , 1903 -- December 4 , 1993 -RRB- was an American writer best remembered for Anna and the King of Siam , her best-selling 1944 novel of the life of Anna Leonowens which eventually sold over a million copies and was translated into more than twenty languages.