Helen Keller -- star of an early silent film, vaudevillian, suffragist, controversial proponent of eugenics -- was first and foremost a writer. Byline of Hope is the first book to collect Keller's journalism - much of it never before reprinted. In articles for Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times, as well as her regular column in the little-known Home Magazine (which ran for 5 years during the Great Depression in the early 1930s) Keller's name was a "Byline of Hope," says journalism professor Beth A. Haller, who collected the articles and edited this edition.
Keller's collected articles in Byline of Hope represent some of "the most genuine of [Keller's] writings," says biographer Dorothy Herrman. "This is probably Helen Keller who Helen Keller was ... unadorned by helpers."
In Byline of Hope, Haller presents and analyzes Keller's writings on spirituality, women's issues, socialism, education and children, as well as her thoughts on blindness and deafness -- and her essays on her meetings with many fanous people of the day.
Valued as much for the famous byline as for their content, Keller's articles reached a broad audience eager for her optimistic message - a message still relevant today.
Keller "offered the perfect message for the 20th century," writes Haller, a professor at Towson University, "that positive social change could occur."
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.
A prolific author, Keller was well traveled and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Helen Keller the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' highest two civilian honors.
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