The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, The Original Deaf-Blind Girl | 
 enlarge | Author: Elisabeth Gitter
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $3.66
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 652387
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312420293
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.41092
EAN: 9780312420291
ASIN: 0312420293
Publication Date: August 1, 2002
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Condition: MINT! NO SHELF WEAR. NO MARKS. NEVER OPENED. 1ST EDITION. A GREAT BUY! IMMEDIATE SHIPPING 4/08 (2)
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In 1837, Samuel Gridley Howe, the ambitious director of Boston's Perkins Institution for the Blind, heard about Laura Bridgman, a bright deaf-blind seven-year-old, the daughter of New Hampshire farmers. He resolved to dazzle the world by rescuing her from the "darkness and silence of the tomb." And indeed, thanks to Howe and an extraordinary group of female teachers, Laura learned to finger-spell, to read raised letters, and to write legibly and even eloquently.
Philosophers, poets, educators, theologians, and early psychologists hailed Laura as a moral inspiration and a living laboratory for the most controversial ideas of the day. She quickly became a major tourist attraction, and many influential writers and reformers—Carlyle, Dickens, and Hawthorne among them—visited her or wrote about her. But as the Civil War loomed and her girlish appeal faded, the public began to lose interest. By the time Laura died in 1889, she had been wholly eclipsed by Helen Keller.
The Imprisoned Guest recovers Laura Bridgman's forgotten life, placing it in the context of nineteenth-century American social, intellectual, and cultural history. Her troubling, tumultuous relationship with Howe, who rode her achievements to his own fame but could not cope with the intense, demanding adult she became, sheds light on the contradictory attitudes of a reform era in which we can find some precursors to our own.
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| Customer Reviews:
EXCELLENT biography of Samuel Gridley Howe and Laura February 24, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have read quite a lot about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan over the years, and I have read a bit about Laura Bridgman. I have read enough to know that "rescue from darkness" comes at a cost and is often not done for the greatest good of the "victim". In Helen and Annie's case, Helen's world was infinitely enriched by Annie's total dedication to her pupil. In return, Annie created a family and garnered recognition for herself. Unfortunately, in Laura's situation, the trade-off was not as well balanced.
Samuel Gridley Howe was a man on a mission to achieve recognition and status among the liberal Boston elite in the early 1800s. His goal was to find and educate an intelligent blind and deaf child and thereby establish himself as a distinguished philanthropist and expert in education and the social sciences. He believed that Laura was a means to that end.
While educating a blind deaf girl may have sounded like an unselfish project in 1837, the horror of Laura's reality is clear today. Laura was often isolated from other children and adults to help make Howe's experiments in education "pure." When Howe felt that he had no more to gain from her, he left her with very limited companionship. So, unlike Helen, her education and socialization, and hence her maturation, stopped when Howe lost interest. As a result, she suffered great loneliness and depression.
Gitter provides a great deal of information about Howe that seems to indicate that he had a narcissistic personality. Her revelations about Laura show that she had great potential for learning and growing that was left untapped as a result of her unnecessary and cruel seclusion from the world.
This book is very well written and clearly reveals the historical and social context of the lives of Laura and Howe. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has even the slightest interest in the subject area.
Ah ,the whole story! October 26, 2002
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Great read packed with info. I've always wanted to know more about her, not just the vague references made in books about Keller and Sullivan.
Splendid Story, Fascinating History August 23, 2002
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The long-forgotten story of Laura Bridgman is riveting: She was the first deaf, blind and mute American to learn English and she did so through the ingenious efforts of Samuel Howe. If author Elisabeth Gitter had done nothing more than reintroduce this story to the world, her book would have been worthwhile. But Gitter does much more. Both Bridgman and Howe were enormously complicated, infinitely fascinating characters and their relationship was unprecedented in human experience (quite a statement, but it's true!). It is incredible, and in many ways, heart-wrenching, to watch their storybook relationship develop and devolve. Gitter wisely tells the story without literary flourishes; it's so remarkable, it doesn't need any. The author is also scrupulously fair to her subjects (few characters in history go from appealling to detestable, and back again, more quickly than Howe) and provides just the right degree of historical background--enough to inform the reader, but not enough to slow down the narrative. A nearly perfect book!
Sensitive and Well Written May 30, 2001
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Elisabeth Gitter has introduced the 21st Century reader to Laura Bridgman, "the original deaf-blind girl" in her well written and sensitive portrayal of "this pitiful little girl" who "became the most celebrated child in (19th Century) America." Along with her teacher and mentor, Samuel Howe, founder of the first school for the blind in America, Laura became an inspiration for the indominability of the human spirit. Yet, as Gitter wisely and perceptively shows, the multi-faceted character behind Laura's public persona was often overlooked by Howe in his zeal to show the world that, in his words, "obstacles are things to be overcome", and that Laura Bridgman was the prime example of the veracity of his statement. With her extraordinary knowledge of the Victorian era in which the story takes place, and her exceptional command of the written word, Gitter has brought Laura Bridgman the honor and dignity she was often denied her life.
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