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Helen Keller (Women’s Issues (Ready Reference series))

Author Profile

Although scarlet fever left Helen Keller blind and deaf at the age of nineteen months, with the help of her mentor, Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to read braille and to lip-read by placing her thumb and forefingers on the speaker’s face. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, specializing in languages and philosophy. Keller was an early advocate for the American Foundation for the Blind and wrote several influential books, including The Story of My Life (1902), The World I Live In (1908), Helen Keller’s Journal (1938), and Teacher (1955).

Bibliography

Blatt, Burton. “Friendly Letters.” Exceptional Children 51 (February, 1985). A notable article on Keller’s personal growth.

Brooks, Van Wyck. Helen Keller: Sketch for a Portrait. New York: Dutton, 1956. Worthwhile.

Einhorn, Lois J. Helen Keller, Public Speaker: Sightless but Seen, Deaf but Heard. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. From the series Great American Orators.

Harrity, Richard, and Ralph G. Martin. The Three Lives of Helen Keller. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. Contains scores of photographs.

Herrmann, Dorothy. Helen Keller: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. A comprehensive, candid biography that describes Keller’s turbulent relationship with Annie Sullivan, her doomed love affair, her struggles to earn a living, her triumphs at Radcliffe College, and her work as an advocate for the disabled.

Houston, Jean. Public Like a Frog: Entering the Lives of Three Great Americans. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing, 1993. Concise biographical sketches of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, and Helen Keller, highlighting their spirituality. This work is unique in that the biographies are interspersed with personal growth exercises that invite the reader’s imaginative participation in crucial moments of the subjects’ lives.

Lash, Joseph P. Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. 1980. Reprint. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997. An excellent biography and literary examination, for which the Keller archives were first opened.

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