The Helen Keller Story Views

Books

[Page] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Helen Keller and Miss Sullivan Frontispiece FACING PAGE Ivy Green, the Keller Homestead (Showing also the small house where Helen Keller was born) 4 Helen Keller at the Age of Seven 22 Helen Keller and Jumbo 32 Miss Keller and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell 76 Miss Keller at Work in Her Study 88 Miss Keller and Phiz 126 Miss Keller, Miss Sullivan, and Mr. Joseph Jefferson 130 Miss Keller, Miss Sullivan, and Dr. Edward Everett Hale 136 Miss Keller and Mark Twain 138 In the Study at Cambridge 250 Helen Keller in 1899 258 Reading Raised Print 292 Miss Sullivan Reading to Miss Keller 396

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.[1][2] The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.

Helen's father's lineage can be traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.[6][9] Coincidentally, one of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich.[6] Helen reflects upon this coincidence in her first autobiography, stating that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. [6]

Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain , which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington,[10] the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.