To Alexander Graham Bell Who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies, I dedicate this Story of My Life....

This book is in three parts. The first two, Miss Keller’s story and the extracts from her letters, form a complete account of her life as far as she can give it. Much of her education she cannot expla...

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task o...

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task o...

I cannot recall what happened during the first months after my illness. I only know that I sat in my mother’s lap or clung to her dress as she went about her household duties. My hands felt every obje...

Meanwhile the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as i...

The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two...

I recall many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul’s sudden awakening. I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handle...

I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others’ lips they catch on the wing, a...

The next important step in my education was learning to read. As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly learne...

The first Christmas after Miss Sullivan came to Tuscumbia was a great event. Everyone in the family prepared surprises for me; but what pleased me most, Miss Sullivan and I prepared surprises for ever...

The next important event in my life was my visit to Boston, in May, 1888. As if it were yesterday I remember the preparations, the departure with my teacher and my mother, the journey, and finally the...

Just before the Perkins Institution closed for the summer, it was arranged that my teacher and I should spend our vacation at Brewster, on Cape Cod, with our dear friend, Mrs. Hopkins. I was delighted...

In the autumn I returned to my Southern home with a heart full of joyous memories. As I recall that visit North I am filled with wonder at the richness and variety of the experiences that cluster abou...

After my first visit to Boston, I spent almost every winter in the North. Once I went on a visit to a New England village with its frozen lakes and vast snow fields. It was then that I had opportuniti...

It was in the spring of 1890 that I learned to speak.1 The impulse to utter audible sounds had always been strong within me. I used to make noises, keeping one hand on my throat while the other hand f...

The winter of 1892 was darkened by the one cloud in my childhood’s bright sky. Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in doubt, anxiety and fear. Books lost their charm for me, and e...

The summer and winter following the “Frost King” incident I spent with my family in Alabama. I recall with delight that home-going. Everything had budded and blossomed. I was happy. “The Frost King” w...

Before October, 1893, I had studied various subjects by myself in a more or less desultory manner. I read the histories of Greece, Rome and the United States. I had a French grammar in raised print, a...

In the summer of 1894, I attended the meeting at Chautauqua of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. There it was arranged that I should go to the Wright-Humason Scho...

In October, 1896, I entered the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, to be prepared for Radcliffe. When I was a little girl, I visited Wellesley and surprised my friends by the announcement, “Some day I...

When I began my second year at the Gilman school, I was full of hope and determination to succeed. But during the first few weeks I was confronted with unforeseen difficulties. Mr. Gilman had agreed t...

The struggle for admission to college was ended, and I could now enter Radcliffe whenever I pleased. Before I entered college, however, it was thought best that I should study another year under Mr. K...

I have thus far sketched the events of my life, but I have not shown how much I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge ...

I trust that my readers have not concluded from the preceding chapter on books that reading is my only pleasure; my pleasures and amusements are many and varied. More than once in the course of my sto...

Would that I could enrich this sketch with the names of all those who have ministered to my happiness! Some of them would be found written in our literature and dear to the hearts of many, while other...

Helen Keller’s letters are important, not only as a supplementary story of her life, but as a demonstration of her growth in thought and expression⁠—the growth which in itself has made her distinguish...

Helen Keller’s letters are important, not only as a supplementary story of her life, but as a demonstration of her growth in thought and expression⁠—the growth which in itself has made her distinguish...

Miss Sullivan began to teach Helen Keller on March 3rd, 1887. Three months and a half after the first word was spelled into her hand, she wrote in pencil this letter. To her cousin Anna, Mrs. George T...

It is fitting that Miss Keller’s Story of My Life should appear at this time. What is remarkable in her career is already accomplished, and whatever she may do in the future will be but a relatively s...

It is fitting that Miss Keller’s Story of My Life should appear at this time. What is remarkable in her career is already accomplished, and whatever she may do in the future will be but a relatively s...

Mark Twain has said that the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. The admiration with which the world has regarded her is more than justified by wha...

It is now sixty-five years since Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe knew that he had made his way through Laura Bridgman’s fingers to her intelligence. The names of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller will always be...

The two persons who have written authoritatively about Miss Keller’s speech and the way she learned it are Miss Sarah Fuller, of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, Massachusetts, who gave ...

No one can have read Miss Keller’s autobiography without feeling that she writes unusually fine English. Any teacher of composition knows that he can bring his pupils to the point of writing without e...

For Miss Sullivan’s account see “Miss Sullivan’s Account of Miss Keller’s Speech.” ↩ For the documents in this matter see “Miss Sullivan’s Account of the ‘Frost King.’ ” ↩ See Miss Keller’s letter, No...