25 must read books - XI

The story of my life

This book is first part of an autobiography by Helen Adams Keller - a blind and deaf American woman who later on became an author, a world famous political activist and lecturer.

She was born a healthy child in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. At the age of 19 months, Helen became deaf and blind as a result of an unknown illness, perhaps rubella or scarlet fever. As Helen grew from infancy into childhood, she became wild and unruly.

Helen Keller met Anne Sullivan, her "teacher" in 1987. That was the turning point in her life.

Anne was a 20-year-old graduate of the Perkins 

Anne began her task of teaching Helen by manually signing into the child's hands.

Helen's extraordinary abilities and her teacher's unique skills were noticed by Alexander Graham Bell and Mark Twain, two giants of American culture.

Helen entered Radcliffe in the fall of 1900 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904, the first deaf-blind person to do so.

While still a student at Radcliffe, Helen began a writing career that was to continue throughout her life. In 1903, her autobiography, The Story of My Life, was published. This had appeared in serial form the previous year in Ladies' Home Journal magazine.

Her autobiography has been translated into 50 languages and remains in print to this day. This book is an ode to life and living.

Helen was famous from the age of 8 until her death in 1968. Her wide range of political, cultural, and intellectual interests and activities ensured that she knew people in all spheres of life.

She was in touch with leading personalities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among her friends and acquaintances. These included Eleanor Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Albert Einstein, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Charlie Chaplin, John F. Kennedy, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Katharine Cornell, and Jo Davidson to name but a few.






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