Was Helen Keller Real? What the Records Show

Yes, Helen Keller was a real person. She was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and died on June 1, 1968. Her books, letters, photographs, films and the objects she used survive, and much of it can be seen or read online. People who knew her, Mark Twain among them, wrote about her in their own time. Some people doubted her while she was alive, too, and what they doubted is worth knowing.

Below: the records and where to see them, how a deafblind woman wrote, and the doubts that followed her. Facts and quotations come from the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), Perkins School for the Blind, the National Park Service (NPS), the Helen Keller Birthplace, and Keller's own book on Project Gutenberg.

Key points

• Born June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Died June 1, 1968. AFB, Perkins and NPS give the same two dates. For a full dated timeline, see Helen Keller's timeline.
• At 19 months she lost both her sight and her hearing. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, arrived in 1887.
• What survives: her autobiography and her letters, an archive of letters, speeches and photographs, films, and objects such as her typewriter and her braille writer.
• Others on record: a 1903 letter to her from Mark Twain, her 1904 degree from Radcliffe College, the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom, and about 1,200 mourners at her 1968 service.
• How she wrote: on a typewriter she called her "right hand man", and on a braille writer.
• The doubt is old. At 11 she was accused of plagiarism over a short story, and in 1899 her account of her entrance exams was doubted. Those doubts were about her work and her abilities, not about whether she existed.

Records at a glance

What survives, and where to see it

Her own books and letters

Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, appeared in 1903. AFB, Perkins and the book's own preface (dated February 1, 1903) point to that year; the NPS page says 1904. The full text is on Project Gutenberg, in an edition that also prints her letters from 1887 to 1901 and a supplementary account by her editor, John Albert Macy. Her other books, and where to read each one, are in Helen Keller's books.

The archive

AFB describes its Helen Keller collection as "the world's largest repository of letters, speeches, press clippings, scrapbooks, photographs, architectural drawings, artifacts and audio-video materials relating to Helen Keller." It calls the online version the "first ever fully accessible Digital Helen Keller Archive" and says the entire digitized collection will contain "more than 160,000 images". AFB's letters page says the letters and articles it shows "span six decades" and include correspondents such as Mark Twain, Albert Einstein and Margaret Sanger. Its biography says the archives contain "over 475 speeches and essays" that she wrote, on topics from blindness prevention to atomic energy.

Objects, photographs and films

AFB's artifact highlights page shows her desk, "used for writing and daily correspondence", a portable Smith-Corona typewriter, and a braille writer presented by the Royal Society for the Blind in 1946. It also shows the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson, and an Oscar statuette for the documentary Helen Keller in Her Story.

One AFB image, dated 1933, shows her hands reading braille. A photograph on the Perkins page, from about 1946, carries a note on the back saying she is typing revisions for her journal.

On film, Perkins's timeline lists the silent film Deliverance, in which she starred, and points to a copy held by the Library of Congress. For the documentary it points to YouTube. AFB's archive page links to films of her speaking.

Places

Ivy Green, in Tuscumbia, is where she was born. NPS says it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Helen Keller Birthplace site says the house keeps original furnishings and memorabilia. NPS and AFB's chronology both say her ashes are interred at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, with those of Anne Sullivan.

What people who knew her put on record

Evidence that a person existed is not only what she left. It is also what others wrote at the time.

• Mark Twain wrote to her on St. Patrick's Day, 1903, after receiving her book. AFB has the transcription: "I am charmed with your book", he says, and he speaks of "an affectionate friendship" of nine years. Another remark of his, which AFB's biography quotes, is that "the two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller."- Radcliffe College conferred her Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, in 1904. AFB's chronology dates it June 28, 1904, and calls her the first deafblind person to receive one. Perkins gives the same year and the same distinction.
• The nation gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 (AFB and Perkins).
• A passport listed her profession as "author", AFB notes.
• Mourners numbered about 1,200 at her service at the National Cathedral. AFB says "over 1,200"; Perkins says 1,200 and dates the service June 5, 1968.

How a deafblind woman wrote

A fair question is how someone who could neither see nor hear wrote books. The records answer it, and she answered it herself.

The typewriter. In The Story of My Life she writes, "I use the Hammond typewriter," and of that machine, "Without it, I doubt if I could go to college." In a letter to Senator George Frisbie Hoar, dated November 25, 1901, she calls it "my right hand man, so to speak" and says, "I write all my themes and examinations on it, even Greek." In his supplementary account, Macy says she "writes with fair speed and absolute sureness."

The braille writer. AFB says she used a braille typewriter to prepare her manuscripts and then copied them on a regular typewriter. Macy notes that a braille writer can write "about half as rapidly as on a typewriter." For how she learned braille, which codes she read, and the 1909 letter she wrote during the War of the Dots, see Did Helen Keller invent braille?.

Her letters. In a letter to Alexander Graham Bell dated March 9, 1900, AFB quotes her on reading letters herself: "A letter always seems more truly my own when I can run my fingers over it." AFB's letters page shows the quotation under a 1933 photograph of her hands reading braille.

Spelling into the hand. Perkins's page says her teacher fingerspelled the names of objects into her hand. For the wider picture of how deafblind people communicate, see how deafblind people communicate.

Why the doubt exists, and why it is old

The sources we read do not explain why people ask this question today. They do show that doubt followed her from childhood, and it was a doubt about her words and her teacher's achievement, not about whether she existed.

AFB's biography puts it this way: the closeness of Helen and Anne's relationship "led to accusations that Helen's ideas were not her own." Her editor, John Albert Macy, wrote in 1903 about how her story was first received. The story of Helen Keller, he wrote, "incredible when told with moderation, had the misfortune to be heralded by exaggerated announcements, and naturally met either an ignorant credulity or an incredulous hostility." Macy was her editor, not a neutral witness, but the sentence shows how early the argument began.

"The Frost King," 1891 and 1892

In November 1891, when she was 11, Keller sent Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins, a story called "The Frost King" as a birthday gift. AFB's chronology and Perkins both date it to that fall. Anagnos was delighted and published it.

Soon Anagnos was told that it closely resembled "The Frost Fairies," a story by Margaret T. Canby in a children's book, Birdie and His Friends. Keller wrote later: "The winter of 1892 was darkened by the one cloud in my childhood's bright sky." She was brought before a "court of investigation composed of the teachers and officers of the Institution", and Anne Sullivan was asked to leave her. According to her book, Anagnos later told Macy that the court had eight members, four blind and four sighted, split evenly, and that he voted in her favor.

What the documents show about how it happened:

• How it was traced. According to Keller's book, Sullivan, with Alexander Graham Bell's help, investigated. Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins, with whom the two had spent the summer of 1888, had owned a copy of Canby's book and felt sure it was among those she had read aloud to the girl, though she could not remember that story. Perkins's page says it appears Keller recreated the story from memory, believing it was her own creation.
• What Anagnos wrote in March 1892. In a letter dated March 11, 1892, printed that spring and reprinted in Keller's book, he said he thought Helen "was entirely unconscious of ever having had the story" read to her.
• What the author wrote. Canby wrote in March 1892, "What a wonderfully active and retentive mind that gifted child must have!" According to Keller, she also wrote, "Some day you will write a great story out of your own head, that will be a comfort and help to many."
• The texts. Macy's supplementary account prints both stories, because "the differences are as important as the resemblances."
• A friend's view. Twain's 1903 letter to her, in AFB's collection, speaks of people "breaking a little child's heart" over plagiarism.

Perkins says the accusation was "extremely wounding" to the 11-year-old and her teacher, and that in 1892 they left Perkins and did not return. Keller wrote that she had "ever since been tortured by the fear that what I write is not my own." The story does not end there: Perkins says she later forgave the school, donated many braille books to its library in 1909, and in 1956 officiated at the dedication of a building named for her and her teacher. AFB's chronology also records the 1956 dedication.

The 1899 entrance exams

Doubt came again after she sat the Radcliffe entrance exams. In a letter to John Hitz, superintendent of the Volta Bureau in Washington, dated November 11, 1899, she took up "the braille question" and wrote that it distressed her "to hear that my statement with regard to the examinations has been doubted." The letter does not say who doubted it. She then set out the facts about the braille examinations. She sat the entrance exams on June 29 and 30, 1899. The college would not let Sullivan read the papers to her, so Eugene C. Vining, an instructor at Perkins, copied them in braille. That is her own account, and we have no second source for the details, but it shows the kind of scrutiny she was under.

The 1903 book

In his supplementary account of 1903, Macy noted that one newspaper suggested Miss Keller had been "led into writing the book." His answer: "The book is Miss Keller's and is final proof of her independent power." He was her editor, so weigh that accordingly.

None of these doubts was about whether Helen Keller existed. People argued about what she and her teacher had achieved, and whose words were whose.

A note on sources

Where sources disagree on a small detail, such as the month of her first visit to Perkins in 1888 or the town where her last home stood, we leave it out. None of those details changes the answer to the question in the title. If you're looking for a line attributed to her, Helen Keller quotes with sources keeps only the ones we could trace.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, our app, teaches braille. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. The English lessons are uncontracted braille (grade 1); they don't teach contracted braille or transcription, and Braillito isn't a braille transcriber.

In 1899 Keller wrote that she was "perfectly familiar with all literary braille", naming three codes: English, American and New York Point. If you want to see how a word or short phrase looks in braille today, the translator on braillito.com shows it in UEB, but it only applies the rules a program can apply. Without paying, the braille translator works in any browser.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Was Helen Keller a real person?

Yes. She was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and died on June 1, 1968. Her books, letters and papers, photographs, films and personal objects survive, and many can be seen or read online, including in AFB's Helen Keller archive and on Project Gutenberg.

Is Helen Keller a hoax, or fake?

Nothing in the records we read supports that. Her own book, letters from Mark Twain and others, a college degree, a passport that listed her as an author, and a 1968 service attended by about 1,200 people are all documented. People did doubt her work during her life, but what they questioned was authorship and ability, not her existence.

How did Helen Keller write if she was deaf and blind?

On a typewriter, and she also used a braille writer. AFB says she prepared manuscripts on a braille typewriter and then copied them on a regular typewriter. She wrote in 1901 that she wrote all her college themes and examinations on a typewriter. See how she learned and used braille.

Was Helen Keller really accused of plagiarism?

Yes. In 1891 and 1892, when she was 11, a story she sent as a birthday gift to Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins, was found to resemble Margaret Canby's "The Frost Fairies." Perkins says it appears she recreated a story from memory, believing it was her own. She later wrote that the episode left her with a lasting fear that what she wrote was not her own.

Where can I see Helen Keller's letters and photographs?

AFB's Helen Keller archive and letters page are public, and her letters from 1887 to 1901 are in The Story of My Life on Project Gutenberg.

Is The Miracle Worker a true story?

It is a dramatization of her early life with Anne Sullivan, not a record. Perkins's timeline lists it as a play by William Gibson, and AFB discusses the film. AFB says the film correctly depicted her as an unruly, spoiled, but very bright child. For what happened, use the primary sources: her book, the extracts from Sullivan's letters printed in the same volume, and the AFB archive.