Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Great story of human courage and dedication recounted in autobiography of a remarkable woman: the magical moment when Miss Keller first recognizes the connection between words and objects, her joy at learning how to speak, friendships with notable figures, her education at Radcliffe and an extraordi

The Story of My Life (1903) is the autobiography of Helen Keller. Written while she was an undergraduate student at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Story of My Life was a joint effort between Keller, her teacher Anne Sullivan, and Anne's husband John Macy. "Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came-my teacher-who was to set my spirit free. But during the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, 'the day is ours, and what the day has shown.'" After losing her hearing and sight as an infant, Helen Keller received a life-changing education from her dedicated teacher Anne Sullivan, herself vision impaired. As she learned to communicate through signs, she found an innate determination to surpass the expectations of those around her, eventually becoming the first deafblind person to obtain her Bachelor of Arts. Her autobiography is a rich retelling of the first twenty-one years of Keller's life, a period marked by tragedy and miracle alike, shaping her into one of the twentieth century's leading civil rights activists and public speakers. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Helen Keller's The Story of My Life is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Story of My Life (1903) is the autobiography of Helen Keller. Written while she was an undergraduate student at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Story of My Life was a joint effort between Keller, her teacher Anne Sullivan, and Anne's husband John Macy. "Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came-my teacher-who was to set my spirit free. But during the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, 'the day is ours, and what the day has shown.'" After losing her hearing and sight as an infant, Helen Keller received a life-changing education from her dedicated teacher Anne Sullivan, herself vision impaired. As she learned to communicate through signs, she found an innate determination to surpass the expectations of those around her, eventually becoming the first deafblind person to obtain her Bachelor of Arts. Her autobiography is a rich retelling of the first twenty-one years of Keller's life, a period marked by tragedy and miracle alike, shaping her into one of the twentieth century's leading civil rights activists and public speakers. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Helen Keller's The Story of My Life is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: twice a week, to give Miss Sullivan a little rest. But, though everybody was kind and ready to help us, there was only one hand that could turn drudgery into pleasure. That year I finished arithmetic, reviewed my Latin grammar, and read three chapters of Caesar's "Gallic War." In German I read, partly with my fingers and partly with Miss Sullivan's assistance, Schiller's "Lied von der Glocke" and "Taucher," Heine's "Harzreise," Freytag's "Aus dem Staat Friedrichs des Grossen," Riehl's " Fluch Der Schonheit," Lessing's "Minna von Barnhelm," and Goethe's " Aus meinem Leben." I took the greatest delight in these German books, especially Schiller's wonderful lyrics, the history of Frederick the Great's magnificent achievements and the account of Goethe's life. I was sorry to finish " Die Harzreise," so full of happy witticisms and charming descriptions of vine-clad hills, streams that sing and ripple in the sunshine, and wild regions, sacred to tradition and legend, the gray sisters of a long- vanished, imaginative age?descriptions such as can be given only by those to whom nature is "a feeling, a love and an appetite." Mr. Gilman instructed me part of the year in English literature. We read together "As You Like It," Burke's "Speech on Conciliation with America," and Macaulay's "Life of Samuel Johnson." Mr. Gilman's broad views of history and literature and his clever explanations made my work easier and pleasanter than it could have been had I only read notes mechanically with the necessarily brief explanations given in the classes. Burke's speech was more instructive than anyother book on a political subject that I had ever read. My mind stirred with the stirring times, and the characters round which the life of two contending nations centred seemed to move right before me...

One of the "hundred most important books of the twentieth century" (New York Public Library), finally published in complete form.

The publication of The Story of My Life in 1903 revealed Helen Keller's astonishing life to the age of twenty-two. The book's honest and absorbing narrative dispelled the notoriety and scandal that had accompanied her treatment in the press. Many people simply could not believe that Anne Sullivan, an unknown young woman from Boston, had fought her way through seven-year-old Helen's deafness and blindness and had taught her to talk and to hear with her fingers. Skeptics, doubting that Helen could read and write better than most children her age, thought that she and Anne Sullivan must be charlatans and publicity seekers.

With evident candor, The Story of My Life explained the "miracle" of Helen's education and the degree to which she had become a full human being sharing and enjoying the visible and audible world. The book presented three interlocking versions of the story: Helen's own; Anne Sullivan's; and their assistant, John Macy's. For over sixty years following the book's publication, Helen's writings and her inspiring public appearances served the causes of the deaf and the blind, the poor and the mistreated, the wounded in two wars, and the handicapped everywhere. When she died in 1968, Helen was widely compared to a saint. The New York Times referred to her as "a symbol of the indomitable human spirit."

The present edition of The Story of My Life, appearing one hundred years after its first publication, will help prevent a great loss—the loss of one of our most admirable and appealing heroes. The immense obstacles that Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan overcame working alone in Alabama surpass Helen's accomplishments as an adult. Between the ages of seven and twenty, Helen enlarged the meaning of the word heroism.

The evidence is all here, in The Story of My Life, of a genuinely beautiful mind. Handicaps and celebrity never warped it. Mark Twain called Helen the most extraordinary woman since Joan of Arc. Everyone, young and old, should know about this compellingly human, deeply spiritual, and unfailingly courageous young woman. The best approach is to read her own words and those of her teacher in The Story of My Life.

This new edition is called "the restored classic" for several reasons. All recent editions have been abridged. In this edition a few changes in order and layout clarify the narrative. With a Foreword and Afterword by Roger Shattuck, and with illuminating notes by Dorothy Herrmann, Helen Keller's highly praised biographer, this volume will remain the definitive edition of this classic work for years to come.

Out of print for nearly a century, "The World I Live In" is Helen Keller's most personal and intellectually adventurous work--one that transforms our appreciation of her extraordinary achievements. Here this preternaturally gifted deaf and blind young woman closely describes her sensations and the workings of her imagination, while making the pro-vocative argument that the whole spectrum of the senses lies open to her through the medium of language. Standing in the line of the works of Emerson and Thoreau, "The World I Live In" is a profoundly suggestive exercise in self-invention, and a true, rediscovered classic of American literature.
This new edition of "The World I Live In" also includes Helen Keller's early essay "Optimism," as well as her first published work, "My Story," written when she was twelve.

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was an American author, lecturer, and political activist. At nineteen months, she suffered an illness that left her deaf, blind, and eventually mute. Helen remained in a lonely state of sensory deprivation until she reached the age of six, when Anne Sullivan (also visually impaired) was employed by the Keller family to tutor her. As a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Wobblies, Helen campaigned for women's suffrage, worker's rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. After her 1904 graduation from Radcliffe with honors in German and English, Helen wrote profusely, completing a total of 12 published books and numerous articles. "The World I live In" (1908) offers Helen's remarkable insight of the world's beauty perceived through the sensations of touch, smell, and vibration, together with the workings of a powerful imagination. It is her most personal and intellectually adventurous work that transforms a reader's appreciation for her extraordinary achievements.

In The Story of My Life, Helen Keller tells the extraordinary tale of her childhood and her mentor, teacher, and companion Anne Sullivan. Before she was two years old, the otherwise healthy Helen became ill with an unidentified condition from which she recovered-but not without losing both her sight and hearing completely. Helen's inability to communicate beyond a few rudimentary signs became a source of despair for the Keller family until a young and ambitious Anne Sullivan was asked to become Helen's personal instructor. Helen's incredible true story is an inspiration to anyone who has faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

These poetic, inspiring essays offer insights into the world of a gifted woman who was deaf and blind. Helen Keller relates her impressions of life's beauty and promise, perceived through the sensations of touch, smell, and vibration, together with the workings of a powerful imagination.
"The World I Live In" comprises fifteen essays and a poem, "A Chant of Darkness," all of which originally appeared in "The Century Magazine. " These brief articles include "The Seeing Hand," "The Hands of Others," "The Power of Touch," "The Finer Vibrations," "Smell, the Fallen Angel" "Inward Visions," and other essays. "Optimism," written while Keller was a college student, offers eloquent observations on acquiring and maintaining a sense of happiness. These essays reflect the author's remarkable achievements, as expressed in her honorary degree from Harvard, the first ever granted to a woman: "From a still, dark world she has brought us light and sound; our lives are richer for her faith and her example."

*The Story of My Life* may be the most extraordinary autobiography ever written. Its author was only 22 when it was published, in 1903, but her life to that point had already been most uncommon: she had been rendered deaf, blind, and later mute by an illness at the age of 19 months, and only years later learned to read, speak, and understand others through the dedication of a teacher extraordinary in her own right. American author and activist HELEN ADAMS KELLER (1880-1968) became famous thanks to *The Story of My Life,* which was later adapted for stage and screen in various incarnations under the title *The Miracle Worker,* a reference to that special teacher, Annie Sullivan. Here, in her own words, is Keller's firsthand experience of the dawning of enlightenment on the severely isolated child she was, and her evolution into the educated and erudite young woman she became.

An American classic rediscovered by each generation, "The Story of My Life" is Helen Keller's account of her triumph over deafness and blindness. Popularized by the stage play and movie The Miracle Worker, Keller's story has become a symbol of hope for people all over the world.
This book-published when Keller was only twenty-two-portrays the wild child who is locked in the dark and silent prison of her own body. With an extraordinary immediacy, Keller reveals her frustrations and rage, and takes the reader on the unforgettable journey of her education and breakthroughs into the world of communication. From the moment Keller recognizes the word "water" when her teacher finger-spells the letters, we share her triumph as "that living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free " An unparalleled chronicle of courage, "The Story of My Life" remains startlingly fresh and vital more than a century after its first publication, a timeless testament to an indomitable will.