The World I Live In (New York Review Books Classics)

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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.

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HELEN ADAMS KELLER (1880x96;1968) was born in Tuscumbia, a small town in northwest Alabama, with full sight and hearing. At nineteen months she suffered a mysterious illness that left her both blind and deaf and interrupted her speech development. Her parents consulted a local expert on the problems of deaf children, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who directed them to the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind. Anne Sullivan, a former student of the institution, began to teach Helen and succeeded in communicating with her in 1887, after which her pupil made extraordinary progress in both reading and writing. Helen Keller entered Radcliffe College in 1900, the first deaf-blind person to attend an institution of higher learning, and graduated in 1904. While in college, she wrote The Story of My Life, published in 1903. The book sold poorly at first, but established itself as a classic, inspiring popular accounts of Kellerx92;s story such as William Gibsonx92;s 1959 play The Miracle Worker. Kellerx92;s second book, The World I Live In, followed in 1908. In subsequent years, Helen Keller joined the Socialist Party and embarked on a career as a public lecturer, raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind, while writing several other books, including Teacher, her tribute to Anne Sullivan. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. The bronze plaque commemorating Helen Keller at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., has been replaced several times, because its Braille inscription has been repeatedly worn away by visitors.