1859 MARY L. DAY. Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl - Education for the Blind, &c.

An excellent autobiographical memoir from one of the most influential blind persons to self-publish, etc., 

May Day was born in 1836, in Baltimore, and moved to Michigan with her parents as a small child. They lived in a log cabin until her mother died and her widowed father moved away, leaving the five Day children to the care of other families.

When she was twelve, Day lost her sight in a sudden attack of “inflammation.” Various interventions were attempted, including surgeries, but she remained blind. She was remanded to a foster family, then moved in with a sister, and at 19 years of age moved to Baltimore to enroll at the Maryland Institution for the Blind in 1855.

Day was one just a small handful of blind authors to pen accounts in the 19^th century. And perhaps the most earnest in her attempts to spread first-hand information on blindness. Her first, as offered here, Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl, was published in 1859. Unusually, she took the step of self-distribution, traveling the United States with a companion, giving talks on her experience as a blind person and selling her book and sewing and beading works to support herself.

Something of a celebrity in her time, she was invited to visit President James Buchanan, who bought a book from her. And a rather unfavorable account of a visit with Susan B. Anthony is preserved by Day. In it she records Anthony’s “cruelty,” scolding Day for advocating the idea that restrictions on blind marriage and parenthood should be considered in light of the genetic element often involved in various conditions leading to sightlessness.  

Day, Mary L. Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl. Mary L. Day.  A Graduate of th Maryland Institution for the Blind. Baltimore. James Young. 1859. First Edition. 206pp.

Good -. Original decorative cloth, rubbed at extremities, through at points, a bit cocked. Nicks to cloth at head of spine and 1/3 of the way down. That said, a generally solid, clean copy.