Publisher Description
Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama . Though born with the ability to see and hear, at 19 months-old she contracted an acute illness that left her both deaf and blind. Eventually, 20-year-old Anne Sullivan , herself visually impaired, became Keller's speech instructor. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship during which Sullivan evolved into Keller's governess and eventually her companion . In 1914, Sullivan's health began to fail, so a young woman from Scotland, Polly Thomson, was hired to keep house. Though she had no experience with deaf or blind people, Thompson progressed to working as a secretary, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller. Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She was a suffragist , a pacifist , a radical socialist, and a birth control supporter . In 1915 she and George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International organization, devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920 she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union .
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About the Authors
Helen Keller (1880–1968), born at Tuscumbia, Alabama, became deaf and blind at nineteen months. Her real life began when she was almost seven years old, on the day when Annie Sullivan, a twenty year-old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, came to be her teacher. They were inseparable until Annie’s death in 1936. Helen went on to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904, becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college. She attained high distinction as a lecturer, writer, scholar, and prominent worker for social reform. Her books include The Story of My Life (1902), The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark (1913), My Religion (1927), Midstream: My Later Life (1929), and Let Us Have Faith (1940). Ms. Keller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as many honorary degrees. Her burial urn is in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.