The Frost King was a short story written by Helen Keller at the age of twelve, in 1892. Miss Keller seriously compromised her and her teacher's credibility with this story, which was an apparent product of cryptomnesia.

The official version

The following is the explanation provided by Miss Keller and Anne Sullivan to the public, both at the time of the incident and some years later when Miss Keller published The Story of My Life.

Miss Sullivan was accustomed to describing detailed visual and auditory impressions to Miss Keller. When she mentioned that the autumn leaves were "beautifully painted" in jewel-tone colors, Miss Keller, then twelve, imagined fairies doing the work, and was inspired to write a story about how Jack Frost came up with the idea when a cask of jewels his fairy servants were transporting melted in the sun and covered the leaves. She sent the story to Michael Anagnos, head of the Perkins School for the Blind where she was a sometime student, as a birthday gift. He had it published in the Perkins annual report, accompanied by his own lushly written endorsement of Helen's talents, and it was picked up by two other journals on deaf-blind education.

A reader wrote in that Miss Keller's story was a reproduction/adaptation of Margaret Canby's story "Frost Fairies", from her book Birdie and His Fairy Friends. Miss Keller insisted she had no memory of having read the book or having had it read to her, but passages in her letters from the period, which she describes as "dreams", are strongly reminiscent of other episodes in the book. It finally developed that in 1888, while Miss Sullivan was on vacation, her mentor Sophia Hopkins had charge of the then-eight-year-old Helen, and had read the book to her through finger spelling. Miss Keller stated that she remembered nothing of this and was devastated that people she had loved and trusted would accuse her of lying.

An enormous storm of outrage swept through the Institute, apparently spearheaded by teachers who resented that Miss Sullivan and Miss Keller had been granted use of the facilities although not employed by nor officially registered with the school. Their attitudes may also have been influenced by Miss Sullivan's low social status (many of the faculty and staff were Boston Brahmins), and by the fact that she and Miss Keller were international media icons. Miss Keller was often portrayed in the press and by famous authors who had met her, as well as by Anagnos himself, as an angel, pure, innocent and without faults. This attitude might well have annoyed members of the faculty, in a reaction similar to that reported by people today who encounter a Mary Sue type of character in literature.

An in-house "trial" ensued to determine whether or not Miss Sullivan had deliberately falsified Miss Keller's abilities; eight teachers interrogated the twelve-year-old child for two hours and fought the issue to a draw, the tie-breaking vote being cast by Anagnos in Miss Keller's favor. Although Miss Sullivan protested that "all use of language is imitative, and one's style is made up of all other styles that one has met," and even Miss Canby came forward to say that Miss Keller's version was superior to her own, Anagnos never regained his faith in Miss Sullivan or Miss Keller and described them years later as "a living lie". Miss Keller had a nervous breakdown over the incident, and never wrote fiction again.

Controversy

In his book Helen and Teacher, Joseph P. Lash reports researching into the Perkins archives and finding an anonymous document called "Miss Sullivan's Methods". It consists of an analysis of letters written by Miss Sullivan and Miss Keller around the time of the Frost King incident. Many of these letters contain paraphrases of Miss Canby's writing, as well as verbatim passages. Miss Keller and Miss Sullivan cited some of these in their own explanation of what happened, and Miss Sullivan stated several times that Miss Keller's writings at that time often contained extensive paraphrases of what she'd read or had read to her.

Lash believes that the author of the document was trying to prove that Miss Sullivan, not Mrs. Hopkins, had read Birdie and his fairy friends to Miss Keller, and had done so that same autumn, not four years previously. He concludes that if this was the case:

• Miss Keller wrote The Frost King as another one of her paraphrased stories, similar to what she'd been writing in her letters of the period.

• Miss Sullivan, who always checked Miss Keller's writings before allowing them to be mailed, would have recognized The Frost King as a paraphrase, but considering it to be sufficiently original, passed it on as Miss Keller's own work.

• Miss Sullivan may not have understood what plagiarism is.

• When Miss Keller was accused, Miss Sullivan attempted a coverup, denying she had read the Birdie stories and impressing upon Helen the importance of stating that Mrs. Hopkins had read her the stories years before.

See also

---

Plagiarism

Cryptomnesia

External links

---

• The Frost King Entire story with explanations and background information by John A. Macy, Anne Sullivan, and Helen Keller.
• What Helen Saw New Yorker article discussing Helen's life and accusations of plagiarism and coaching throughout her life.
• Written in Memory Nation article discussing Helen's acquisition of language and the significance of the Frost King incident.
• Mark Twain's Letter The famous statement that nearly all human expression is a form of plagiarism, written to Miss Keller in 1903 after the publication of The Story Of My Life. Miss Keller faced similar charges after the publication of this book. Some critics alleged that John Macy had written the book and passed it off as Miss Keller's work.