ABSTRACT
Helen Keller (1880-1968) was 19 months old when a childhood illness claimed both her sight and hearing. Trapped in a dark, silent world, Keller became, in the next 6 years of her life, increasingly wild and unmanageable. When their daughter turned 7, Helen Keller’s parents contacted the famous Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, requesting a private tutor for the child who clearly longed to communicate with the outside world. “The most important day I remember in all my life,” Keller would later write,“was the day my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.” Sullivan not only taught Keller to read braille and to communicate through sign and speech, she became her pupil’s lifelong friend and companion. The relationship of teacher and student—both brilliant women, with powerful, independent spirits—comes through vividly in Helen’s autobiographies and in Anne Sullivan’s letters.
