The Story of My Life

Published in 1903, The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's autobiography detailing her early life and experiences with her teacher, Anne Sullivan. The volume is dedicated to telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, "who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies." Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880, Helen Keller was the child of newspaper editor Arthur H. Keller. When she was 19 months old, Helen contracted a severe case of scarlet fever, leaving her deaf and blind. Several years after her illness, her family visited Alexander Graham Bell, who suggested Helen's parents contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. At the age of six, Helen was provided a teacher, 21-year-old Anne Sullivan, from the Institute. Together with Anne, Helen was able to pass the admissions exams for Radcliffe College, publish her autobiography, write articles for the Ladies' Home Journal, and master five languages by the time she was 24. Keller worked most of her life for causes supporting social reform, including those for women's rights, universal suffrage, and foundations for the blind. In 1964, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1965. Since her death in 1968, Keller has been celebrated and remembered with countless memorials, honors, movies, books and more.