Good Morning and Good Night is the second memoir by Margaret Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak, consort of Charles Brooke, the second ‘white Rajah’ of Sarawak. From the 1880s Brooke was estranged from her husband and returned from South-East Asia to London, establishing herself as a part of a literary circle that counted Oscar Wilde and Henry James among its members. Following on from her 1913 memoir, My Life in Sawawak, Good Morning and Good Night provided further glimpses of a nation that was a curiosity to many in Britain. Throughout the book, Brooke wrote that despite the difficulties she experienced in her marriage, she admired her husband's governance and maintained a love of the country and its people.
Sarawak had been granted to Brooke’s uncle James Brooke by the Sultan of Brunei, Omar Ali Saifuddin II, in 1841 following his assistance in tackling Malay pirates and restoring the Sultan to his throne. Becoming known as the ‘white Rajah’, James Brooke pursued a controversial policy of suppression against Indigenous groups to cement his rule, claiming such actions were to root out pirates and to end cultural practices such as headhunting. Nominally independent but under the protection of the British Empire, the Brookes ruled Sarawak as a personal kingdom until its until its cession to Britain in 1946. It is now part of Malaysia.