SIGNED BY HELEN KELLER AND ANNE SULLIVAN: THE STORY OF MY LIFE, EXCEPTIONALLY RARE LIMITED LARGE-PAPER FIRST EDITION FOR SUBSCRIBERS, ONE OF ONLY 60 COPIES

KELLER, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903. Octavo, original gray paper boards respined, new paper spine label, uncut and partially unopened. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition, limited large-paper issue of the autobiography of a remarkable woman and “a symbol of human potential and the indomitability of the spirit” (ANB), one of only 60 copies published for subscribers, signed by Helen Keller and Anne Mansfield Sullivan beneath their frontispiece photographic portraits.

"As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly… 'w-a-t-e-r… That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!" Annie Sullivan's breakthrough moment in teaching Helen Keller has been enshrined in popular culture thanks to William Gibson's The Miracle Worker (1959). In these pages, over a half-century before the popular play, Keller sets down the full story of her education and subsequent early achievements in her own words. "Profoundly and permanently deaf and blind, she was to carve out a life that astonished nearly everyone… Her protean accomplishments caused Mark Twain to dub her 'the greatest woman since Joan of Arc" (ANB). Keller also presents an extensive selection of her letters to such correspondents as Alexander Graham Bell, Edward Everett Hale, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Phillips Brooks. The book also includes Sullivan's reports on teaching Keller. Illustrated with 14 photographic plates, including frontispiece portraits of Keller and Sullivan (counted as a single plate). The first portion of the book, Keller's autobiography proper, previously published in serial (and abbreviated) form in the Ladies' Home Journal (see Shattuck, xv). This is a copy of the rare large-paper limited edition, of which only 60 copies were published for subscribers; this copy is unnumbered. The large-paper limited edition was published the same month as the first edition (March 1903), priority unknown. Original spine and paper label laid in. Library blindstamp on title page and evidence of bookplate removal. Owner signature.

Interior fine. An about-fine copy, most rare and desirable signed.