Keller, who was deaf and blind, brought hope to millions struggling through hardship, through her work as a writer, speaker, and activist.
In her lectures and writings, Keller fought for the rights of people with disabilities and the rights of workers, for antimilitarism, suffrage, socialism, and other causes. In , it was published as a book. For forty years, Keller worked on behalf of the American Foundation for the Blind , and traveled the globe to lecture and advocate. Today, Keller is known mostly for her advocacy of people with disabilities, but in her life she was regarded as one of the most important and eloquent writers and lecturers on the subject of socialism.
Her influence and the wide admiration she enjoyed led to many commendations and honors in and after her life, in the U. Her visage can be found on coins and stamps, her life on stage and screen. Streets, hospitals, and schools around the world bear her name. The organization, now called Helen Keller International, has been operating since it was co-founded by Keller in to provide vision care to vulnerable communities. Keller died in her sleep in , at 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. Much of her education she cannot explain herself, and since a knowledge of that is necessary to an understanding of what she has written, it was thought best to supplement her autobiography with the reports and letters of her teacher, Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan. For the third part of the book the Editor is responsible, though all that is valid in it he owes to authentic records and to the advice of Miss Sullivan. Edward Bok and Mr. William V.
Laurence Hutton, who supplied him with her large collection of notes and anecdotes; Mr. Sophia C. Hopkins, to whom Miss Sullivan wrote those illuminating letters, the extracts from which give a better idea of her methods with her pupil than anything heretofore published.
