The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller is an autobiographical account, detailing her early life. Helen Keller overcame almost insurmountable obstacles of deafness and blindness to become one of the 20th century’s leading humanitarians. A symbol of determination and perseverance, Helen was born on the June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her father, Captain Arthur Henley Keller, was a former Confederate Army officer. Her mother, Kate Adams Keller, helped her husband run the family’s cotton plantation.

Helen in her lifetime personally knew many of the world’s most famous people. Mark Twain (the writer) and Alexander Graham Bell (the inventor) were among her close friends. Although she became famous herself, Helen Adams Keller never saw her friends or heard them speak. Before she was two years old, she was living inside a world of darkness, surrounded by a world of silence. Then she met a teacher who used her own hands and fingers to unlock Helen’s world of isolation. This is the story of that transformation.

The novel has been introduced by CBSE in the curriculum of class X English Communicative, as a Long Reading Text. The novel is divided into two sections – Section I and Section II.

Section I comprises the text, the summary and the post reading questions. This section has the unedited and unabridged text in the original form as written by the author. All important aspects of the novel have been touched upon keeping the originality of the novel intact. A chapter-wise summary is given at the end of each chapter for clarity and understanding. Meanings of difficult words and phrases appear as footnotes on each page. Post-reading questions, based on understanding of the text/narrative, are given at the end of each chapter.

Section II comprises solved, long answer questions based on the theme, the plot, the incidents and the characters