Helen Keller: Autobiographies & Other Writings (LOA #378): The Story of My Life / The World I Live In / Essays, Speeches, Letters, and Jour nals

Helen Keller

Mrt. 2024 · Library of America

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In her own words, the legendary American icon who overcame adversity to become a brilliant writer and powerful advocate for the disabled: The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, plus a dozen revealing personal letters, public speeches, essays, and more

Here, in a deluxe hardcover edition, is the inspiring story of an American icon—“the greatest woman of our age,” as Winston Churchill put it—in her own words.

The Story of My Life (1903), published just before she became the first deaf-blind college graduate in the United States, brought Helen Keller worldwide fame, and has remained a touchstone for generations. Recounting her astonishing relationship with her teacher, Annie Sullivan, "the Miracle Worker," it offers still-vivid testimony of the transformative power of love and faith in overcoming adversity.

Keller’s underappreciated literary artistry and philosophical acumen are especially evident in the personal essays that make up The World I Live In (1908): exploring her own “disability,” she reflects profoundly on language, thinking, dreams, belief, and the relations between the senses.

Also included are more than a dozen letters, speeches, essays, and other works—most of them from out-of-print, uncollected, or previously unpublished sources—charting more than 50 years of Keller’s exemplary life and career. These pieces reveal her commitments to women’s rights, workers’ rights, racial justice, and peace, as well as her advocacy for the disabled.

Kim E. Nielsen, Keller’s biographer and the author of A Disability History of the United States, introduces the volume, which includes a 16-page portfolio of photographs and a newly researched chronology of Keller’s life, along with authoritative notes and an index.

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Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, Helen Keller lost her hearing and sight at 19 months after an unknown illness, perhaps rubella or scarlet fever. When she was 6, Anne Mansfield Sullivan arrived as her teacher: Keller recounted the astonishing story of their relationship in The Story of My Life, later adapted in the play and film The Miracle Worker. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904––becoming the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor's degree––and went on to write a dozen books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. She suffered a stroke in 1960, and died at home in Westport, Connecticut, on June 1, 1968.

Kim E. Nielsen is Distinguished University Professor and Disability Studies Chair at The University of Toledo, and was founding president of the Disability History Association. She is the author, among other books, of The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (2004), Beyond the Miracle Worker: Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller (2009), and A Disability History of the United States (2012).