Blindness: books by and about the blind

This CD, with 40 books, includes works written by the blind (Homer, Milton, and Helen Keller), plus fiction with blind characters. Thanks to Dr. Kenneth Jernigan for his article "Blindness: Is Literature Against Us?" which is found at http://www.blind.net/bpba1974.htm which discusses many of the works included here.

Intended for use with PCs (Windows or Linux) and recent Macs (OS X), our books are in plain-text format, not audio or video. You read them on your computer screen.

You can see the complete table of contents below. Please use the Find function in your browser (under Edit) to look for a specific author or book.

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Works about Blindness

Kate M. Foley

• Five Lectures on Blindness

Works by Blind Authors

Homer

• Iliad
• translated to English by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers
• translated to English by Samuel Butler
• translated by Edward Earl of Derby
• translated by Alexander Pope
• Odyssey
• translated to English by Alexander Pope
• translated to English by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
• translated to English by Samuel Butler

John Milton (1608-1674)

• Areopagitica
• Comus
• Four Poems
• L'Allegro
• Comus
• Il Penseroso
• Lycidas
• Of Education
• Poemata (Latin, Greek, and Italian poems) translated to English by William Cowper
• Poetical Works(four books in one document)
• Miscellaneous Poems
• Paradise Lost
• Paradise Regained
• Samson Agonistes
• about Milton
• Mary Powell and Deborah's Diary by Anne Manning (Mary Powell was Milton's first wife)
• Life of Milton by David Nasson
• volume 3
• volume 5
• Milton by Mark Pattison
• Life of John Milton by Richard Garnett
• Milton by Sir Walter Raleigh

Mary L. Day Arms (1836 - ?)

• The World as I Have Found It

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

• Song of the Stone Wall (poem)
• The Story of My Life

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References to Blindness in the Bible

• Genesis (Isaac and Jacob)
• Judges (story of Samson)
• The Gospels (healing the blind)
• Matthew
• Mark
• Luke
• John
• Acts (Saul/St. Paul, blindness and revelation/conversion)

Editorial note: Oliver Sacks in An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales on p. 109, discusses "restoration of vision in adulthood to a patient blind from early childhood", a situation which, as Sacks quotes form Alberto Valvo, in Sight Restoration after Long-Term Blindness, "'the number of cases of this kind over the last ten centuries known to us is not more than twenty.'" Sacks notes "What would vision be like in such a patient? Would it be 'normal' from the moment vision was restored? This is what one might think at first. This is the commonsensical notion -- that the eyes will be opened, the scales will fall from them, (in the words of the New Testament) the blind man will 'receive' sight. But could it be that simple? Was not experience necessary to see?" In a footnote linked to this passage, Sacks adds, "There is a hint of something stranger, more complex, in Mark's description of the miracle at Bethsaida, for here, at first, the blind man saw 'men as trees, walking,' and only subsequently was his eyesight fully restored (Mark 8:22-26)."

The passage referred to in Mark reads as follow:
"And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto  him, and besought him to touch him.
And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the  town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.
And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.
After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him  look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.

The reaction "I see men as trees, walking" is counter-intuitive, but true to modern medical knowledge, And the circumstance of sight restoration is extremely rare.  It seems that this passage originated with personal experience, preserved by word of mouth, perhaps because it was so bizarre, until recorded in writing.

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Works of Fiction with Blind Characters

Anonymous

• La Vida de Lazarillo, in Spanish

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

• The Last Days of Pompeii (Nydia)

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

• The Merchant's Tale from Canterbury Tales

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)

• Poor Miss Finch

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

• Barnaby Rudge
• The Cricket on the Hearth (blind heroine named Bertha)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

• Sir Nigel (the main character is a blind detective)

Euripides (480-406 BC)

• The Bacchae (Tiresias the blind seer)

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

• A Simple Soul (Felicite)

Lucy Furman

• Sight to the Blind

Homer

Odyssey (Tiresias, the blind seer, in the Underworld)

• translated to English by Alexander Pope
• translated to English by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
• translated to English by Samuel Butler

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

• The Man Who Laughs, in English (blind heroine named Dea)
• L'homme qui rit, in French
• Notre Dame de Paris, in English [AKA The Hunchback of Notre Dame]

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)

• Westward Ho (Amyas Leigh)

Rudyard Kipling

• The Light that Failed

Jack London (1876-1916)

• Sea Wolf

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

• Blind Bartimeus (poem)
• Born Blind (poem)
• The Blind Girl of Castel-Cuille by Jacqwues Jasimn, trans. by Longfellow (poem)

John Milton (1608-1674)

• Samson Agonistes  (Samson)

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)

• Wilhelm Tell, translated to English by Theodore Martin
• Wilhelm Tell, another translation

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

• The Bride of Lammamoor
• Old Mortality

Richard Seltzer

• Tiger in the Intercom (children's story)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

• King Lear (Gloucester)

Sophocles (496-406 BC)

• The Oedipus Trilogy (Oedipus himself, also Tiresias the blind seer)

• Oediups the King, in English
• Oedipus at Colonnus, translated to English by F. Storr
• Antigone, in English

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

• Kidnapped
• Treasure Island (Blind Pew)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

• The Borderers (play)