Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Helen M. Winslow was an American editor, author, publisher, and journalist. She began her work on Boston papers. Winslow served as dramatic editor on The Beacon, 1891–97; editor, Woman's Club Department, Boston Transcript, 1893–98; editor, Woman's Club Department of the Delineator, 1897, and again 1912; editor and publisher, The Club Woman, 1897-1904; and she was the publisher of the Official Register of Women's Clubs in America from 1897. She was the author of Salome Sheppard, Reformer. 1893; Concerning Cats, 1900; Concerning Polly, 1902; Literary Boston or To-day, 1902; The Woman of To-morrow, 1905; The President of Quex, 1906; Peggy at Spinster Farm, 1908; A Woman for Mayor, 1910; The Pleasuring of Susan Smith, 1912; and At the Sign of the Town Pump, 1913. She collaborated with Frances Willard in Occupations for Women, and with Marie Wright in Picturesque Mexico.
Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist, poet, and translator of French-language works. A religious dissenter, she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution; she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France. A controversial figure in her own time, the young Williams was favourably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth.
Helen Marot was an American writer, librarian, and labor organizer. She is best remembered for her efforts to address child labor and improve the working conditions of women. She was from Philadelphia and became active in investigating working conditions among children and women. As a librarian, she worked at several important institutions and helped organize the Free Library of Economics and Political Science in 1897. Marot was a member of the Women's Trade Union League. She later organized the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union in New York. In 1912, she was part of a commission that investigated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. She was an active writer and her articles about the labor movement appeared in many periodicals of the day.
Helen May Rowland was an American journalist and humorist. For many years she wrote a column in the New York World called "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl". Many of her pithy insights from these columns were published in book form, including Reflections of a Bachelor Girl (1909), The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor (1915), and A Guide to Men (1922).
Helen Sherman Griffith was an American author. An Iowan, she was the "prolific" author of the Letty Grey series of children's books, published by Penn Publishing Company of Philadelphia. She was the daughter of Hoyt Sherman and Sara Sherman, who was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa at Hoyt Sherman Place. Helen's bedroom has been restored and is part of the Hoyt Sherman Place house museum.
