The Story of My Life

The Story of My Life (1903) is the autobiography of Helen Keller. Written while she was an undergraduate student at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Story of My Life was a joint effort between Keller, her teacher Anne Sullivan, and Anne’s husband John Macy. “Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came―my teacher―who was to set my spirit free. But during the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, ‘the day is ours, and what the day has shown.’” After losing her hearing and sight as an infant, Helen Keller received a life-changing education from her dedicated teacher Anne Sullivan, herself vision impaired. As she learned to communicate through signs, she found an innate determination to surpass the expectations of those around her, eventually becoming the first deafblind person to obtain her Bachelor of Arts. Her autobiography is a rich retelling of the first twenty-one years of Keller’s life, a period marked by tragedy and miracle alike, shaping her into one of the twentieth century’s leading civil rights activists and public speakers. This edition of Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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Helen Keller (1880-1968) was an American author, activist, and lecturer. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller suffered a sudden illness at nineteen months old that left her both deaf and blind. Her parents brought her to Baltimore to consult with Alexander Graham Bell, then a teacher for deaf children. He referred them to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, which paired Keller with Anne Sullivan, a visually impaired instructor who would remain by Helen’s side for the next half century as her governess and companion. With Sullivan’s help, she learned to read and write, as well as to speak using the Tadoma method. Between 1888 and 1900, Keller attended specialist schools for the deaf and blind before being admitted to Radcliffe College, then Harvard University’s school for women. In 1903, she published her autobiography, The Story of My Life, with the help of Sullivan and her husband John. A year later, Keller became the first deafblind person to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts. She joined the Socialist Party of America in 1909 and spent the next twelve years speaking and writing on topics such as women’s suffrage, pacifism, and workers’ rights. In addition, she joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1915. Keller was also a prominent activist for African American civil rights, supporting the NAACP and joining the American Civil Liberties Union. From 1924 on, she dedicated herself to lecturing and organizing for the American Foundation for the Blind, traveling to thirty-five countries and across the United States to speak on behalf of those living with blindness. Major written works include Out of the Dark (1913), a collection of essays on socialism, and My Religion (1927), a spiritual autobiography expressing her relationship with the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg.