The Imprisoned Guest : Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl

In 1837, Samuel Gridley Howe set about rescuing Laura Bridgman, a deaf-blind seven-year-old, from the "darkness and silence of the tomb." Bridgman learned to finger-spell, to read raised letters, to write legibly and even eloquently, and became a living exhibit for contemporary theological and psychological debates, with influential writers and reformers -- Carlyle, Dickens, and Hawthorne among them -- visiting or writing about her. But by her death in 1889, she had been wholly eclipsed by the prettier, more ingratiating Helen Keller. The Imprisoned Guest is an absorbing, inspiring account of an extraordinary life.