The World I Live In

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.Helen Keller, edited and with an introduction by Roger Shattuck